Since starting school in August, I have made almost no art- just some occasional sketching and the doodles for this blog. This is the biggest break I’ve ever taken from art. I wanted to explore other parts of myself while in school and see who I was without art. I had been putting a lot of pressure on myself creatively for a long time, and doing the MBA gave me a reason to set it aside for a while. To be honest, I did not know if or when I would come back to art. I had years of creative burn out and self-doubt built up, and I decided not to give myself any expectations. I had never really thought about being anything besides an artist, and school was an opportunity to throw myself into the challenge of exploring other versions of myself. This experiment has been successful; I proved to myself that I am capable in ways I did not expect, and expanded my conception of myself in terms of what I can do, what I enjoy, and how I fit into the world. It turns out that there is more to me than art.

But now I’m here, staring down a summer that begs the question: what comes next? Who will I be post MBA? Do I want to amalgamate all these parts of myself, or let pieces go? I decided that this summer will be my opportunity to find out. After the changes I have undergone this year in how I think of myself, I want to see if my creative practice will feel different, too. I was pretty nervous about this; I had a lot of baggage related to being artist, and I worried that it would all come rushing back, or that my creative instincts would have completely eroded, or that my passion for art would simply be gone.

So, for the month of May, I eased myself back into art. No rules, no expectations, just making things and seeing how it feels. At first, those old negative voices did bubble up: I don’t have anything worth sharing, I’m too slow, this won’t get me anywhere… But those voices had lost most of their power in the face of something else: I missed making art. As soon as I started drawing again, I felt so much joy in the creation process that I didn’t care if I made anything worth sharing. I didn’t care if it was good, or productive, or useful- I was just having fun. I couldn’t remember the last time I felt so relaxed and happy while making art, and it affirmed to me that at a deep level, this is something that will always be a part of who I am. I will always be an artist.

This experience made me realize that creative burn out is improved by a long break, just like other forms of burn out. Having something else to take up my focus was also helpful- I don’t know if I could have fully taken my mind away from art if I didn’t have schoolwork to pour myself into instead. I have never been very good at just relaxing.

I also feel that cutting out social media was a positive factor this year. I had slowly deleted my social media accounts over the past few years, and Instagram was the last to go. It has been refreshing to not inundate myself with an endless stream of other people’s art this year. This has helped me feel more connected with my own interests and ideas, instead of choosing projects based on how well they’re display on Instagram. For example, I did a little series of drawings called ‘first cars’, which featured a few of my own favorite cars over the years. I’ve always been a car person, but never really put it into art before. It feels obvious now, but in the past, I was too worried about making the ‘right’ kind of art to consider whether I was making art that I loved. This was a subtle kind of self-negation- I was telling myself that what I liked didn’t matter, or that I couldn’t trust my own tastes, even if I never consciously thought of it that way. This month, I have fully indulged my own interests, and I have made pieces that I love. Instagram be damned.

All this to say, it was a relief to take a big step away from my creative practice, and it is a joy to return to it now. It feels like coming back to myself with a hug instead of criticism. I feel more excited about making art than I have in a long time, and I can’t wait to keep creating.

Thanks as always for reading. Here are some of the drawings I made this month!

Gathering My Thoughts

Art Restart