Cultivating a creative life

Thursday 3rd March 2022

This is a small corner of my sister’s garden in Cheshire.

Unlike me, Lesley has lived nearly her whole adult life in the same family home and her garden is testament to the years of hard work and commitment to cultivating a beautiful space outside her back door.

As I approach fifty years of age, I am slowly learning that a creative life is more like a garden to love and nurture, a place to explore, to invite others into, a space to dig into and give time to let things grow to maturity.

Things worth doing take a life time. They cannot be hurried, they cannot be rushed. Just as a garden requires regular time and attention to plant, water, nourish, weed, rake, and sow, so too does a life of creativity.

As I’ve pressed further and further into pursuing my passion for art over the past decade, it has dawned on me that cultivating a creative life is a way of life rather than an end goal that can ever be achieved. It is holding and balancing each day with all its busyness and demands alongside that powerful, inward pull and being willing, even for only a few moments, to answer that call to create.