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I have reinvented myself as a creative more times than I can count.

Textile artist. Painter. Life drawing. Printmaking. Clay. I have bounced around between mediums, styles and projects for decades. And for a long time, I thought that was a problem. That I couldn’t settle. That I didn’t have a clear enough voice or a strong enough direction.

What I’ve come to understand is that it was never a problem at all.

The Thread You Can’t See Until Later

Here’s something that took me at least ten years to notice.

All that bouncing around, all that experimenting across print and clay and textiles and everything else, there was a thread running through all of it the whole time. A common way of working, a set of things that mattered to me, a fascination with how things imprint, with memory and nostalgia and the physical trace things leave behind. It was there in everything I made. I just couldn’t see it until I looked back.

And that looking back has given me more clarity about where I want to go next than anything else possibly could have. Because now I can take the parts of printmaking I love, the parts of clay I love, the parts of everything I’ve explored, and bring them together into something that is entirely and unmistakably mine. Nobody else on the planet will be making the work I’m about to make, because it’s born from this specific, messy, exploratory journey that only I have been on.

That’s the gift of play. Of experiment. Of never dismissing the creative wandering as wasted time.

Delve And Shelve

Inside our Creative Way process we have something we call delve and shelve. It’s the practice of looking at everything you’ve created, everything you’ve tried, everything you’ve been involved in, and asking what you want to bring forward and what you want to put down for now.

Not quit. Not abandon. Just shelve. Because the things you put on the shelf have a habit of coming back around when the time is right.

I do this with individual pieces of art. I do it with creative projects. I do it with whole chapters of my working life. And it’s how I’ve been able to keep reinventing without losing the thread of who I actually am.

Right now I’m in one of the biggest reinventions of my creative life. A new platform for my own art. New in-person projects. A completely new direction in some ways. And the exciting thing, having got past the scary part, is that none of it is actually new. It’s all built from everything that came before.

The Formula I Always Go Back To

When I’m stepping into something new, something I’ve never done before, something that feels exciting but slightly overwhelming, I always run it through my 7 Keys framework.

It’s nine years old and more relevant now than when I first wrote it.

The 7 Keys starts with why. Why do I want to do this? What’s the feeling underneath the excitement? Is this genuine passion or is it shiny object syndrome? Because there’s a difference, and getting clear on that early saves a lot of wasted energy.

Then it moves into mindset, into figuring out what the thing actually is, and most importantly into the who. Who are the people this is for? Who do I want to find and connect with through this work?

That question, the who, is where everything unlocks for me. Every new project I’ve taken on in the last ten years, the ones that have worked, have been the ones where I got really clear on the people before I did anything else.

Reinvention As An Art Challenge

One thought I want to leave you with, and one we’re going to be bringing into our art challenges soon.

Take a piece you made years ago and reinvent it now. With everything you’ve learned since. With the hands and eyes and feelings you have today. Not to fix it or improve it but to see what happens when the artist you are now meets the work the artist you were then made.

That conversation between past and present is where some of the most interesting work lives.

If you’re in a season of reinvention right now, I’d love to hear about it. Reach out on socials and let me know where you are in your creative journey.

And if you’d like to go deeper on standing out authentically and finding your people, join us for the Standout Artist Masterclass on the 28th of September. Link below.

 

THE STANDOUT ARTIST MASTERCLASS

The 3 steps to finding the right people and opportunities for your art.

In this masterclass we will cover:

  • Making art that is unmistakably yours so it stands out to the right people
  • Who your people are, because when you want to get your art into the world, people are everything
  • Connecting, instead of just being visible, so your art reaches the right people and opportunities

28th September, 11am UK (replay available for 48 hours)

Click to register: https://unitedartspace.myflodesk.com/standout-artist-masterclass

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Have a great week & take care,

Michelle xo