Dear creativity

I will create what I love, and I will love what I create, and that will be enough

the desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul - Dieter F Uchtdorf

While I was pausing

The date is 30th September 2023.

I sit down to draw. It’s only been a week since I sent my letter, Pause. I am a little bit heartbroken.

I feel bereft. I want to draw. I want to write again. I have a vague notion to draw a picture that illustrates how creativity makes me feel. To illustrate the words “drawing lights my soul and makes my heart sing”. To ask people to tell me what lights their soul and makes their heart sing.

I’ve drawn this before. I’ve drawn her before, so I know a little of what she is but I don’t have a fully formed image in my mind. I don’t know how she will turn out. Its exciting and scary. Unless I am drawing a fine art piece, I never have a clear picture in my mind of what I will draw - it’s more of a nebulous collection of half ideas, that will only coalesce once I start. It is the process that brings life, gives shape and definition. It feels almost otherworldly.

I know she will be a little girl. Young and innocent. Pure and unsullied.

I think she will be standing in profile, with her head slightly lifted. I know that she will glow, and that there will be music.

I start

A dark blue background. A soft creamy white pencil.

I capture the outline of her face. A tiny smile, a little upturned nose. Eyes closed. Hair drifting. At first she wears a dress with her arms stretched behind her. Her feet pointed downward and slightly behind, as if she is floating. But no, that doesn’t work.

Her hands fold lightly over her heart. The dress is replaced by dungarees. She stands straight with her tiny bare feet flat on the ground. Yes.

The background comes alive with blues and greens and tiny white dust motes. The music is next. A treble clef and five lines of a stave expand and curl away, semibreves and quavers, crotchets and minims. No particular rhythm or melody, just notes pouring forth from her heart.

I start to colour her face. A pale pink skin tone to start. But again - no. That doesn’t work. She is a lighted soul. I fill her outline with the same soft white that I started with, I make it transparent.

I draw her hair. It wisps and drifts from my pencil onto the canvas. Pale and glowing layers like shining strands of gossamer. I sketch light onto her skin and dungarees. Radiance from the stars that are yet to appear lights her face and her little nose. A touch of candyfloss pink luminescence on her cheek.

And here are the stars.

She is finished.

I name her Eirlys. She has been spun from the iridescent strands of Arianwen’s magical web¹.

I’ve reaslised something while drawing her. It’s not only drawing that lights my soul and makes my heart sing.

It’s creativity. It’s the joy that comes from echoing on the outside the endless inspiration that starbursts daily on the inside of my heart and soul.

This is where I would have my mind dwell; on creativity and imagination and beauty. It is what I need.

I am going to spend as much time as I can creating delightful things out of my existence, because that’s what brings me awake and that’s what brings me alive - Elizabeth Gilbert

And that I cannot pause.

I put her on my phone. I hang her on my wall. I send her to my friend

Keeley Rees

on the other side of the world.

She joins my other best friends.

left to right: Eirlys, Solace, Merryn, Esmerelda, Georgie, Nox

Solace, kind and compassionate.

Merryn, curious and tenacious.

Esmerelda, full of inspiration and ideas.

Georgie, courageous and confident.

Nox, calm and peaceful.

And Eirlys, my oldest friend.

She is creativity.

She was with me making mud pies and moss gardens and perfume from rose petals. Pressing flowers and making homemade cards to send to family and friends far away.

She joined me when I decorated my bedroom with dozens of pom-poms and draped swaths of beautiful fabrics and silk scarves all about in creatives ways, turning my room into a sumptuous boudoir.

As I learned to play the clarinet and the flute, the time I built a matchstick model of a vintage bus and when my sister and I recorded episodes of a kids radio show that we called Dogs Tales that no one heard but us, she was there.

She helped as I made little people and animals from polymer clay, clothes for my dolls and myself, as I knitted and crocheted, dabbled in woodcarving and marquetry, and drew, and drew and drew.

She has been there from the very first time I discovered the joy in my own creativity. At my side through every discovery, every experiment, through every success and every failure. She is with me still, when each beautiful creation from another soul touches my heart.

And if you would like, she can be with you too.

I have opened my online gift shop for Christmas. All my friends are there on cushions and canvases and cards, as well as designs from my other collections.

Come and take a look!

If you enjoy my words and my pictures and would like to support me to continue drawing and writing, become a paid subscriber today for less than £2 a week. You’ll get full access to my ever growing gallery brimming with gorgeous illustrations to create beautiful things for your home, your life and your online spaces.

Bye for now,

1. In the book, The Snow Spider, by Jenny Nimmo, Arianwen is a magical spider who appears when Gwyn, the protagonist, gives the gift of a silver broach to the wind. She spins an intricate web of Bethan, Gwyn’s missing sister and Eirlys arrives shortly after, an orphan with a striking resemblance to Bethan, with fair skin and silver hair.