The past two years have been a challenging time for our family’s health, and this has had an impact on what I’ve been making and how much time and energy I’ve had to spend on my art practice. It’s also made me think about the whole idea of productivity and the way it can become an unhelpful pressure that can stifle creativity.
Work in progress - sketch of Yasmine Smart and Porto
Last winter, I spent a few months recovering after a major operation and I needed to put my efforts into my recuperation before anything else. A friend had said to me before I went under the knife, “Ooh, you can make lots of art while you’re off work!” I expressed my doubts about this, as previous ill health had drained my creativity almost completely at times. The comment made me think about the pressure to be productive, no matter what. It also made me think about creative hobbies (done for fun in your spare time) or creativity as a job (which feels to me something with more responsibility to get things completed and secure exhibitions or opportunities). Both of these things are valid modes of making, and I would say that you can be an artist or creative as either a hobbyist or professional.
Approaching your creative practice as a job can understandably take some of the fun out of it. There is a weight of expectation that the artist can put onto themselves, alongside external pressures to produce finished work (an upcoming show, a commission, selling work and so on). There’s also quite a lot of admin work to keep up with, so a lot of artists don’t spend as much time being creative as they’d like to. There are applications to write, accounts and record-keeping to keep up with, social media posts, marketing and so on. My day-job pays the bills and allows me to carve out creative time, but sometimes it takes all of my spoons to do that, and my creative time is instead spent resting (or more likely procrastinating while my brain resets itself!).
That’s not to say that I don’t love being a creative. It is part of me, whether it’s my job or not. I have made art my whole life, from scribbling on magazines that my mum gave me as a tiny toddler, to drawing horses as a teenager and sketching the world around me as an adult.
When I started to be able to do more things after my operation, I moved on from reading novels and watching gentle TV series (thanks for aiding my recovery, BBC Pride and Prejudice (1995 version) and The Other Bennett Sister) and old movies (my first time watching The Godfather, which is brilliant but not at all gentle, and a revisit of Citizen Kane, a masterclass in film techniques). I began to draw, and once again felt the pleasure and mental benefits of this activity.
While I was stuck on an NHS waiting list for many months, I’d already found that drawing could be a soothing activity, taking my thoughts away from their anxious loop. I felt that I was tapping into two things that were working together for my benefit; making drawings was moving my creative practice forward and the state of ‘creative flow’ would remove me, for a time, from the worries I was experiencing. Drawing is a magical thing for me!
While my body started to regain its strength, drawing helped me to feel positive and gave me a sense of achievement. I haven’t been particularly ‘productive’ in the currently understood sense of the word, in that I have only completed a few ‘finished’ pieces of art that would be suitable for exhibitions, but I have a lot of sketches on paper and ideas in my sketchbook that I can work on. More than that, I feel like myself again and I am enjoying making new work that continues my current line of enquiry, as well as testing out ideas for fun. It’s a bit of a cliché, but it’s a real privilege to have art in my life!
Exhibition at Eastside Projects
Summer Camp Show, 5 – 19 September 2026
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| Elephant Christening, Charcoal and pastel on paper, 2026 (A2) |
A note on arts and health research
There’s a huge amount of research about the health benefits of taking part in creativity, including a recent UCL study that found that people who visit museums and galleries regularly age more slowly! Two books I have particularly enjoyed on the subject of arts and health are both science-led; Your Brain on Art by Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross, which I have recommended over and over to colleagues and friends, and Art Cure by Daisy Fancourt, which is excellent on this subject. I am not paid to promote either of these books, I just love reading and understanding how our brains work (and how creativity affects us)!
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