I appreciate it when my friends offer to step in since I’m packing. Today’s post is from Rosemary Kaye in Scotland. Rosemary covered the Edinburgh Book Festival, and offered to share a couple of her stories. Thank you, Rosemary!

Creative Practice Books

‘The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable.
Practising an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow…..Sing in the shower.
Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you
possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.’
(Kurt Vonnegut: A Man Without A Country)
Now if you are thinking ‘That’s all very well for you, Mr New York Times Bestseller List author’, fear
not – you are not alone. Almost every writer, artist and musician struggles at some point. What will I
draw, paint, write about? Is it even worth bothering when I’ll never be as good as X?
There are some wonderful books out there to help you.
Every creative – or would-be creative – likes nothing more than a chance to procrastinate while
soaking up advice (counts as work, right?), so whether you want to do some creative ironing with
Bob and Roberta Smith or embrace the Great Creator with Julia Cameron, these books can help you
find your inspiration.
The UK Channel 4 series Grayson’s Art Club was a lockdown hit. Grayson Perry hosted the show from
his own studio along with his wife Philippa. Each week they spoke to different creatives, asking them
how they were spending their time in lockdown and asking them to respond to various themes, such
as dreams, travel or food.
More importantly for our purposes though, the Perrys also invited members of the public to share
their own work. Over 17,000 submissions were received in all formats; together they form a lasting
record of immediate responses to a new and alien experience. The results are documented in
Grayson’s Art Club (just don’t look at the cover if you’re feeling fragile…)

ICU nurse and photographer Hannah Grace Deller took a selfie of herself in full PPE; she
photographed swings tied up in the playground, and people standing yards apart.
Noel Fielding (yes he of the Great British Bake Off) painted his fantasy party. The ‘guests’ included
Grace Jones and a minotaur.
‘They say you can’t have parties in lockdown but you can! You just have to paint everyone yourself.’
Simran and Mandish Khebbal made a collage of their family in the living room. Anita Kapila used a
cardboard box to create Barbie in Lockdown.

Barbie in Lockdown © Anita Kapila

There are so many great ideas in this book – any one of them could serve as a jumping-off point for us now. You don’t need to be responding to the pandemic – subjects like ‘home’, ‘love’, ‘holidays’ and ‘what’s inside my head’ are universal, and seeing how ordinary people have interpreted them can be so inspiring.

‘We’re saying the finished thing doesn’t have to be good, but the process has to be genuine. And it has to be heartfelt and enjoyable. We’re not saying make art like a professional, we’re saying get stuck in and lose yourself a while in it … I am trying to democratise art, but I’m not saying it means a drop in quality. It just means upping the accessibility and entertainment. Entertainment and humour are often denigrated, but they take just as much skill as the so-called intellectual level of high culture.’ (Grayson Perry)

But maybe you’ve got plenty of ideas, it’s just that every time you try to put them into action that inner critic leaps out of its box and reminds you how totally rubbish they are. Procrastination, self-doubt, fear of failure; they’re all out to get you. How often have you deleted a file, ripped up a drawing, wept bitter tears of defeat and wandered off to see if there’s any cake left in the tin? I know I have.

Richard Holman and Al Murphy’s Creative Demons and How to Slay Them draws on inspirational anecdotes from art, philosophy, neuroscience, nature, music and contemporary culture to provide you with the mental armoury to get through every stage of the creative process;

….the longer you leave your demons unchecked, the more they will thrive and the bigger they will become. Fail to confront them and they may completely overwhelm your creative impulses…(they) will paralyse you, and that triumphant, life-affirming feeling of stepping back from the lyrics you’ve just written, the pot you’ve just thrown or the image you’ve just drawn and thinking ‘I made that!’ will never be yours.

Leonardo Da Vinci, Marina Abramovic, Brian Eno, Dr Seuss; they all had to get through this one somehow, and no, whatever their success may lead us to think, they didn’t simply glide along on a magic carpet of inspiration and self-confidence. Find out how they did it in this great little book from Thames and Hudson.

Julia Cameron wrote The Artist’s Way in 1993. She’s an artist, poet, writer, and teacher of creativity workshops. Her answer to the question ‘How can you teach creativity?’ is;

‘I can’t. I teach people to let themselves be creative.’

She believes that everyone – whether they call themselves ‘A Creative’ or not – is creative, and that by engaging with what she terms the Great Creator, everyone can discover and recover their creative powers.

This may sound a little Zen, and the subtitle of Cameron’s book is indeed A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, but if that sounds too New Age for you, she suggests you think of it as ‘an exercise in open-mindedness.’ And under that banner she offers a twelve-week programme, originally based on classes she taught for blocked artists and writers at the New York Feminist Art Institute (back in those hazy, heady 1970s.) With sections on such topics as ‘Recovering a Sense of Safety’, ‘Recovering a Sense of Power’ and ‘Recovering a Sense of Compassion’, The Artist’s Way aims to free the reader from often self-imposed blocks.

Cameron leads us through a step-by-step process, starting with ‘The Basic Tools’ – and for her these are nothing to do with practical equipment; they constitute two fundamental activities; ‘Morning Pages: three pages of purely stream of consciousness longhand writing or ‘brain drain’, and ‘The Artist Date’: taking time to be in solitude with your artist self. Cameron requires you to spend two hours a week alone, going for a walk, visiting a different neighbourhood, going bowling…

watch your killjoy side trying to wriggle out of it…watch how this sacred time suddenly includes a third party…learn how to guard against these invasions… This book, which has sold over four million copies worldwide, has stayed in print for nearly thirty years, and is regularly recommended in writing classes, could change your life.

Some of us are not hampered by thoughts but time. We feel we need at least a morning to start our sculpture or outline our poem, but our lives are just too busy to fit that in. So we do nothing, and frustration mounts. These two books might help:

One Line A Day: A 5 Year Memory Diary has space for just a few thoughts or reflections each day. Its layout enables you to see your entries for the same day in previous years. Only having room for brief observations can help remove the pressure; anyone can scribble down a line or two, but those lines could turn into the inspiration for your next creative work. Yes, you’ll still need to find time to do that work, but so often the greatest challenge is getting started. Once the spark is there, it’s so much easier to carry on.

This beautiful little book has stunning artwork by Kindah Khalidy, a padded cover and a ribbon page marker. It would make a great present too.

Chronicle Books’ One Sketch a Day: A Visual Journey is a sketchbook small enough to keep in your pocket, with space to doodle, build drawing skills or record experiences every day for a year. Again, it offers a low-pressure way to start and maintain a daily practice; you can fit in a doodle anywhere; while you’re on the bus, hanging about for children to come out of school, or in the dentist’s waiting room. It might even take your mind off the drill. This one would also be an excellent present.

I’ve saved my favourite till last. The jazzy ‘street’ cover of Bob and Roberta Smith’s You Are An Artist caught my attention straight away. Turning to the contents page, I was fascinated. The list of ideas for projects you can try at home includes ‘Paint a dead relative not from a photo’ and ‘Make a symmetrical stencil based on the shape of your nose.’

The author is in fact Patrick Brill, acclaimed artist, writer, musician and keynote speaker. (He acquired the pseudonym when he worked with his sister Roberta.) He’s probably best known for his ‘slogan art’, which is exhibited in galleries around the world, but he also makes sculptures from cement. He founded the Leytonstone Centre for Contemporary Art, he’s on the board of the Tate, and a professor at London Metropolitan University. He’s an activist who’s worked on many public art projects, including, in 2019-20, Thames Codex, in which he documented the histories and identities of Thamesmead (in south London) and its communities.

I thought I was making a painting about a housing estate, but actually I’ve been painting about the desire to be heard.

Brill/Smith has campaigned furiously against the government’s downgrading of art in schools;

All schools should be art schools. Music makes children powerful.

He’s even produced an alternative national curriculum featuring everything from Louise Bourgeois to The Specials via the Lindisfarne Gospels, Poly Styrene, Neville Brody and the Book of Kells.

Smith sees ‘art as an important element in democratic life’ – and this is reflected in YOU ARE AN ARTIST, a book combining a meditation on art practice with a series of practical exercises and ‘creative provocations.’ It’s full of ideas that anyone can have a go at, and it’s tremendous fun.

Creative ironing, anyone?I see him as a sort of Ian Dury of the art world, someone who keeps on trucking, doing his own thing, making absolutely no concessions to fashion or marketability, but generally giving pleasure to everyone who comes across him.

Lynn Barber (The Observer April 2008)