A few months ago I was attending an online summit to learn more about gut health and one of the experts speaking said something that really stuck with me.
She was a multi-talented woman being both a naturopath (her reason for being on that particular summit) as well as a counsellor. A wise woman whose name I have since forgotten but who looked like she'd had many lifetimes worth of experience in her 40 something-year-old body. This is what she said:
"I started a practice of making bad art."
Bad art? 🤔 I was curious as I'd never heard this term before. As I kept listening she went on to share that the whole point was to simply spend more time being creative.
Not thinking. Not analysing. Not trying to be productive.
But rather just playing. Making something. Creating for the process of creating (not the result).
When I saw that Trippy's Street Art contest this month was based around the world luv I knew I wanted to enter. Mostly because love is my jam, my religion (if I had one), my guiding light.
But then I remembered, yet again, how bad I am at drawing! 😶
Writing ✔️
Teaching ✔️
Learning ✔️
Drawing or doing anything that I consider artistic or creative (in the traditional sense of the word) ❌
Was I willing to enter a contest I knew I would totally bomb at?
Was I willing to face the discomfort of struggling through something I don't really enjoy (mostly because my creativity does not want to naturally through drawing lines on a page, but rather spilling words out instead?
Was I willing to do something that I believe will be the worse of the "art" created within the group? And share it, for others to see, and judge?
And then I remembered this counsellor's practice of making bad art.
And I realised it's a practice and it has a purpose. Its purpose is to be in the process of making something.
It also allows me to practise being a beginner, to struggle, to face my own judgements (because I know ya'll be much kinder to me than I'm being to myself).
Its purpose is to remind me that I'm not good at everything and that's okay; I'm still an awesome human even if I'm less than awesome at several thousand skills including the skill of putting pencil to paper.
So today I practised making bad art. I put lead pencil to paper with the intention of drawing the word "luv" (or "LUV" as the case may be).
I thought about the colours that seemed a match for the word at the moment and after skipping over the conditioned, automatic response I found to draw it in red ❤️ I easily found myself drawn towards blue 💙 and orange 🧡 (the colours of the Ukrainian flag) and yellow 💛 (the colour of sunflowers; the national flower of Ukraine) and the colours of the chakras, in order from top to bottom (chakras being the centres of energy in our bodies).
This was the result. 👇
Looking at it again before I post this I feel embarrassed. It feels amateurish, childlike, not good enough.
But if I pause for a moment and imagine that I had a 6 or 7 or 8 year old child come to me and say:
"Mum, look what I drew today," with big eyes of hopefulness that I would love it and accept it for the piece of creativity that it is, then it is easier to love and accept what my adult self created today.
Because, after all, somewhere inside me is a child that's still trying to express herself and creativity in whatever way it can come out.
Luv to you and your inner child, whatever they've created today 💗