Amateur - one who loves

May I never be anything else

Swallows skim through the sky, banking and wheeling with extraordinary precision, changing direction with fluid grace too quick to follow. I watch as they flit high above the sweeping boughs of the oaks that cast dappled shadows across the lane. I am mesmerised by their astonishing dance and the liquid chatter of glittering notes tumbling through the air. I long to translate the eloquence of their movement, their endlessly intricate conversation, the expanse of blue sky and the canopy of shimmering leaves through poetry in my notebook.

Delicate lines feather outward and ephemeral snail trails glisten along the bare wood of a dead tree in scrubby woodland. I pause beside it and lay my hand against its pale skeleton. My fingers trace the winding galleries etched into its bones by engraver beetles. I long to capture the exquisite tracery of unseen lives written beneath the bark and the sculpted contours of growth and decay, in pixels through the curve of my lens.

The surface of the olive wood is satin-smooth and warm beneath my fingertips like soft-touch fabric. I search patiently, lifting each piece, weighing it in my hands and running my palm across curves shaped by years of slow growth. I turn them over and over, marvelling at the elaborate patterns that whisper stories of sunlight, wind and rain. I long to follow the twists of weathered grain and the warmth of honeyed tones with the nib of my woodburner, to glide the glowing metal along scorched arcs and inhale its smoky aroma.

A hidden world unfolds in my mind, its forests, rivers and forgotten cities layered with histories that stretch back to a time long before the first chapter. A boy creates a masterpiece, a girl begins to glimpse another world, and an old man’s mind slowly begins to unravel. Their lives interlace across a sprawling tapestry of betrayal and grief, mystery and magic. Inspiration spills a silvery cascade of anticipation through my veins, and sets butterflies dancing in my chest. I long to follow these intertwining lives with pen in hand, weaving their story into words upon the page.

This longing is an ember that smoulders on through hundreds of hours and thousands of words. It kindles with the first flicker of an idea before dawn and burns on long into the night. It asks for countless pencil strokes to coax depth and light from layers of graphite, and for a steady hand to guide a glowing wire across wood, one painstaking line at a time. It endures false starts, abandoned drafts and mistakes that demand beginning again. It persists through uncertainty and frustration, wearied muscles, aching hands and a tired mind.

How do you measure the value of that which asks so much and promises so little?

Judged through the lens of efficiency and utility, dedicating so much time, effort and energy to creating makes little sense. Why willingly devote hundreds of hours to a story that may never be published, a drawing that may never be sold, artwork that may never be exhibited?

Before creativity was measured, marketed or monetised, we stitched, carved, wove and painted. We told stories with charcoal and ochre, with patterns and pigments, with clay and cloth. Before we could hold up our work to the adulation, disdain or indifference of the world, we made anyway. We wrote anyway, we created, we drew, we painted. Before there were patrons, publishers, platforms, followers, subscribers or algorithms, there was this. This ancient instinct, practiced for as long as there have been human hands to shape the world. Out of need, out of wonder, out of love.

The word amateur traces its roots to the Latin amare, “to love”.

It is difficult to imagine a better word for this ancient longing to create.

Amateur. One who loves.

May I never be anything else.

With love,

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For anyone choosing an annual subscription, I would love to send you an art print from my collection, as a thank you for gifting me another moment of freedom to explore and to create.