How expressing my emotions helped me find creative fulfilment
A journey of artistic unlearning
I’ve been writing a lot of poetry lately, which I’ve been sharing on my Substack, and it’s been taking me by surprise.
I don’t see myself as a poet, and at no point did I intentionally set out to start writing poetry. I am writer though, and I’ve always loved words and writing in my journal. It was while I was writing in my journal that I realised poems were forming from my reflections, I just hadn’t noticed it before. It took my artist residency for me to realise this (which you can read all about here), and to cause a kind of creative unlocking in me.
I think though, that at the root of this creative discovery is an emotional unlocking.
Until very recently I felt like there was a chasm inside me between my emotions and my art. I’d look at other people creating with feeling and in response to their emotions, and I just didn’t understand how they were doing it.
It’s not that I didn’t feel my emotions—I do, deeply—but there was a freedom of expression I could see other creatives tapping into, which I just couldn’t relate to. And when I asked people how they did it, I would often get a response along the lines of “I don’t know, I just do it”.
My struggle to create with and from my emotions meant that when life got difficult, my creativity would falter. This is to be expected to a degree, because stress inhibits creativity, but creativity can be an immensely powerful tool to help understand, process and transform emotions. I was largely cut off from a really helpful part of creativity, and when I experienced a significant bereavement it pushed me into a long creative winter.
It was during my artist residency that I started to let myself just express my emotions without worrying about what I was making.
Like many women, I’ve been socialised to shut down my anger—to squash it down and put a tight-fitting lid on it—and letting myself feel and release what I had been suppressing was immensely cathartic.
The more anger and emotion I let myself release through artmaking, the more my emotions started to show up elsewhere in things I was creating, like in my poetry.
I also had a really significant realisation during this time, which is that school taught me how to create from the head, but not the heart.
Rather than being invited to seek inspiration in our own ways, art classes at secondary school made us follow a set formula to choose what to create. We made mind maps and researched artists, and were told we had to logically explain what we were making and why. We weren’t invited to just follow what we were drawn to, or feel our emotions and express those.
Creating became a head-driven process, and I had to unlearn this to be able to start fully expressing myself in my creations.
I didn’t take art beyond GCSE level, but throughout my whole life I’ve taken art classes and creative workshops of all kinds. But while they certainly helped me develop technique and skill, I never really felt fully engaged with what I was making. I felt I was “doing art”, but the art was external, not coming from within me. That’s not to say they weren’t worthwhile to do—I learnt so much, and did like some of what I created—but there was always something lacking.
I was equating art simply to the act of making something with an art material, without it being an engagement or expression of my inner world somehow.
And for me at least, that missing piece is where true creative satisfaction lies.
I don’t think there’s enough teaching in the world that guides us how to connect to that crucial piece of the puzzle. So much of the art world is about prestige and judgement of technical art skill, and I think that filters down into education. Not just formal education either; I would say about 99% of the art and creativity classes and workshops I see are intended to teach a technique or improve a skill in a medium, and there’s very few that actually encourage you to travel within, explore your emotions and figure out what specifically makes you tick and brings you creative joy.
We need more of that.
We need more people encouraging creative abandon. Release. Imperfection. Art for the sake of art, and art regardless of whether it’s “good enough” or not.
We need to worry less about our technique and creative skill, whether we have enough training or whether we’re “accomplished” or not.
We need to make art that comes from deep within ourselves. The art our soul sings for. That’s something which is uniquely individual to each and every one of us though, and following someone else’s process isn’t going to give you the answers you’re looking for, because that person is not you.
The only place you’re going to find those answers is within yourself, you just need to look. It takes courage, and time, and you might need support along the way, but I truly believe it’s where creative satisfaction truly lies.