On creativity, goodness and reprinting the past

I glanced along the table at the group of mostly-strangers I had chosen to spend Mothering Sunday with. None of them were related to me. Aside from the one friend I came with, I had never set eyes on any of them before today.

Yet something about them seemed strangely familiar.

A quiet goodness.

Once again, I was grateful I’d come. I had hesitated, given the date.

But instead, I took a moment.

I took a day.

I took a whole Sunday to do some art.

Almost on a whim, I had booked a printmaking course with a friend. It had been so long since I’d had any focussed time for art. I felt a little bad abandoning my family on a key date, but it was the only day this specific course was running and, as they pointed out, ‘It’s Mother’s Day, you can do exactly what you want!’ So, with the promise of a family dinner afterwards, I set off.

By some stroke of serendipity, the course took place just around the corner from my former, and now demolished, secondary school. The place where I had concluded I was ‘no good at art after all’. Arriving a little early, we drove round to see the empty space where those classrooms of despair had stood – now razed to the ground.

Now I was here, surrounded by creative souls, soaked in an industrious atmosphere of freedom and concentration…. Sometimes we worked in silence, sometimes we chatted as we scratched away at our makeshift printing plates, and there, I learnt something else.

I was expecting to learn a new art technique, but I wasn’t expecting this.

There was so much talent here. So much expertise. I felt a little in awe.

But there was something more than that.

Those women on my art day, each one so creative and gifted, all seemed to be helping others in some way. Each of them unable to turn their gaze aside from the need around them. For a time, it had meant they were unable to prioritise losing themselves in their own art because they were too busy giving to others.

I felt so humbled.

One spoke of the occasional sharply keen temptation to leave her job as a secondary school art teacher, but then added, ‘…but they need us, those kids, some of them just really need us.’

Another had spent decades as a primary school teacher, adapting her creativity to the shape needed there. She longed for more time to make her own art but knew some of the children came from places of difficulty and she didn’t want to abandon them, felt compelled to be with them. A third taught art to those on the very margins of society and spoke of a few of her students who discovered their creativity through her and now worked as commercial artists, a new start in life. Still another talked about her full-time work supporting a family member with additional needs, but added that this person is an artist in their own right… and the stories continued to flow. So many people there seemed to be giving of themselves and their art to others.

But this also came from the fact that they had, at some previous point, prioritised that art, given it focussed time and love and attention. And now, they were here, with at least a snapshot of time to nurture their own gifts again. A time for everything.

Their mix of creativity and social concern challenged and inspired me. Mostly, though, it reminded me that art is not an act of selfishness, as I had sometimes been led to believe (‘How can you waste time on that when there are so many ‘more important’ things to do?’). Instead, it can be an act of deep goodness.

These people oozed goodness not just because they were doing good things but because they had first allowed themselves the freedom to create and develop their gifts, to be fully themselves, unstifled by warped opinions about needing to be more useful.

It started therefore, not with the ‘being good’ but with the ‘being creative’, following the whisper of hope and beauty that called to them.

It reminded me how if you allow yourself to work on it, your art may someday help and inspire others. How this can be true of all our gifts.

Maybe more importantly though, even if you don’t feel you’ve reached a level where your art, writing, music, cooking (or whatever else your calling might be) moves other people, the very act of doing it, of making art, of letting your creativity flow rather than clogging it up with self-doubt and obligations, becomes its own gift to the world.

I pondered how, in the end, this was the perfect way to spend Mothering Sunday. On this day which has become a time to celebrate all the nurturing that happens, I was learning this lesson anew.

I pondered too, how I had somehow received this message about the selfishness of taking time to create, the guilt I had so often associated with it. Yet there is nothing selfish about creativity in itself. Your creativity can be nurturing and life-giving to others. It happens in different ways. Maybe you will use it specifically to help others grow and heal, like many of these women had. Or maybe you will simply be the version of yourself who has allowed their creativity to breathe; allowed all the pent up, coiled up parts of yourself to unfurl.

Maybe people will see your work and be moved, learn something they need to learn. Or maybe they will just meet a more relaxed, loving version of you. Or both. And both ways have value. Because some of us find our humanity in the creative corners. It awakens a fuller love in our souls and helps us to see things more clearly. It brings us life and makes us more human.

So, I took a day out, away from the craziness of what my family’s life had become in the preceding months. I took a day to do an art course and learn a new technique.

And I did learn the technique. But what I really learned was goodness.