Hello everyone, so its been 10 weeks since I suddenly lost my wife and best friend after 37 years together, and don’t feel like much has changed in how I am grieving, but know I’m in the early stages of this horrific situation in my life. As I’m a painter, I recently got myself into my studio to try and paint, but finding that It’s a complete struggle to feel motivated to be creative in how I work. I said to myself that I would work towards a show in her honour which my gallery would exhibit next spring. Am I biting off more than I can chew?? Am I putting to much pressure on myself to be ready with enough work by next June when I’m a complete mess? Is there anyone else out there who’s an Artist that might be experiencing something similar to this? I am finding it so difficult to cope, but at the same time feel like a lazy fraud if I don’t work like everyone else.
I can’t always paint. When that happens I just doodle instead so no pressure but at least is mindful to relax.
I helped some kids make a collage on Saturday.
Just don’t put much pressure on myself.
I did go on holiday and treated myself to some new gear. On my own i did some sketching and painting because on my own I felt I could. Wasnt very happy with the results but at least it was something to do. Didn’t especially help when it was very raw after losing my husband I wrote poetry instead. But it is nearly two years since my husband died. Motivation is a devil lots of times.
Organisation is tricky.
I joined in an art event so didn’t need anything which was easy.
Mix some paint, pick up a brush and start. Create from your emotions as a new widower and get mad at the canvas or capture sweet memories with paint. Put it all out there.
Yes, you can.
Much love.
Thank you:pray:t3:
I’m not an artist, but I’m a writer. Oddly, I found that I wrote a lot at the 4-6 month stage, but a year on, I’m finding it much more hard to concentrate on the work. I think initially the grief fuelled my writing, and I wrote more about the process of grief itself rather than the personal experience. But as Enorac says, motivation can be the devil, and I’m finding it more difficult now. Use the grief as inspiration and paint through it.
@Rob7 I work as a digital artist and I can relate to what you say in experiencing little motivation in the early days. It’s fast approaching 2 years for me now and at first I really struggled to engage with the creative process, so many distractions and so much to think about, so many dark spaces to sit in. I work in the professional sphere and so have to create to earn a living, I have to say that a lot of the work that I produced in the first year or so seems disjointed and often at odds with the brief I was working to, a lot of focus on inconsequential details and a sense of a forced drive behind the development and realisation. However I had little option but to be creative as this was my livelihood. This year things seemed to have settled back towards where they were, my process is smoothing out and I feel as if I’ve made some connections, discoveries and developments within my practice that are an extension of the work I produced last year. As ever the creative studio practice marches on. All of this is only my experience but for me it seemed to have a positive outcome, I recognise aspects of where grief has taken me both emotionally and practically in my work and in the process I use to achieve this, I’m more inclined now to listen to inner voices that demand new directions, to rip it all up and start over, to be less precious. For me there are always deadlines and tbh sometimes they have felt oppressive and other times focal and so liberating, something to get on with, a very immersive distraction. I can’t really advise or encourage you to take any course of action, perhaps it will be too much of a responsibility, perhaps it will ease your passage through grief, all I can say is that for me the act of returning to creating has all in all been a positive choice and i feel as if i have developed for having made the effort at the same time as keeping a very open mind to the results that it may produce.
Yes I recall long ago when my newborn died then my parent’s that I struggled but in a different way. Then it wasn’t about my life changing as it didn’t take off as planned and I was left without parents but I had been a carer to my mother as well when my father died it was different. I had to go back to work no choice whereas as an old woman losing my husband as an elderly man and left is different from had he died when I was fitter and younger.
It is a huge struggle at my age. A huge adjustment. It is so tough. But I have to try my best. Singing feels creative and feels more normal. I can still knit and sew. That is creative.
I can design things. The process is the same.
Even if only designing a Halloween door display by making it myself with what I have is creative
Thanks for all your help and encouragement. I know it will happen, but need to put less pressure on myself.
Take care…