Hen's weekend at Hawk's Nest- last weekend

 

A strange experience last night, when I fell head over heels into a depression pit, for no sensible reason. It’s an odd sensation, like suddenly dropping into a hole, a deep badly lit hole, with greasy walls. You shake yourself, try a bit of sensible self-scolding ‘oh for God’s sake princess, harden up’ but nothing works. All the good stuff: humour, resilience, self-discipline, optimism, energy, seems to suddenly vanish leaving this grey world. Going through the motions, it’s like your own personal electricity supply has been shut down, leaving you half alive and not quite sure how to get back to normal.

I’d had a good weekend. Sophie’s swim lesson first thing Saturday morning, the joy of watching a toddler practice their starfish float, bubbles and rocket arms; then I drove north for KS’s hens night at a beach cottage in Hawks Nest, so the plunge into greyness was surprising. Like a lot of creative people, actually like everyone, I experience occasional bouts of sadness, but it’s rarely something that lasts very long, I usually snap out of it in a day or two. I have friends with serious depression, and it’s nowhere near that level, more of a feeling that for a short period the colour has leached out of everything and everything becomes an effort. I remember one of my drawing teachers in Hobart had an endlessly sunny disposition, but every once in a while he’d be grey, delicate and shy. We asked him what was wrong once and he seemed surprised and touched that anyone had noticed, muttered something about him trying not to let it effect his teaching. (It’s small moments like this that feed my endless affection for artists).

Late afternoon at Hawk's Nest

I’ve long ago accepted this as part of my emotional landscape. If I can feel it approaching, I’ll be kind to myself, do very little, rest and eat a lot. The reason I mention it is that last night I did all these things and woke up this morning feeling fine. I realised that I’d just been extremely tired and had mistaken one thing for another. Years ago, working and working in my studio, preparing for my Masters show in London, I didn’t realise how run down I’d got until I literally fell over. Sitting in a daze on my studio floor it suddenly dawned on me that I was buggered. Beat. Totally stuffed. It’s something that has happened periodically over the years, particularly during highly creative periods. And I didn’t really mind it, not at all, it was just the price you paid; and usually if you’ve been working that hard you get something good out of it. Stepping off at the end of an intense creative cycle, real life seems as dull as cabbages.

Hawk's Nest at sunset

But this is the first time this has happened since I became a mother, so it was a shock. In the past I was pretty much free to curl up in a ball until I’d recovered, but now I’m not. Toddlers demand their parents to be 100% switched on, engaged, available, not sitting on the sofa wondering how to glue their brain back together. Luckily Aaron came over and played with Sophie, she went to bed at a reasonable hour and I got a decent night’s sleep. When I awoke this morning, the world felt like a completely different place.

It probably happened because I’ve been trying to cram so much into my life. It’s the combination of many factors: turning forty, knowing the university holidays are about to end and that I’ll have to start teaching again, a renewed determination to earn a living solely from painting and writing, a fear of wasting potential and time, the knowledge that the GFC has made it that much harder for artists to generate income.  Nearly every minute of my waking life has some purpose or activity attached to it: there is bugger all sit-on-the-sofa-and-eat-Tim-Tams down time.

Sunset at Hawk's Nest

Feeling this sense of urgency, I experiment with different ways of optimising time. Last week I read two things that counselled completely different time management strategies. In his post ‘My single greatest tip for achieving the perfect state of flow‘, writer and adventurer Shawn Mihalik suggested turning off the clock at the top of your computer in order to facilitate creativity. A day later KS emailed me to say that she was thinking of trying the Pomadoro Technique. It involves breaking the working day into 25 minute chunks and concentrating on one task at a time. It’s supposed to maximise efficiency and align with the brain’s innate concentration patterns:  I guess there’s not enough time to get bored and wonder what’s for lunch!

Anyway, it struck me that as an artist and a parent there are significant opposing forces at work in my life. As a mother I try and keep things to a fairly predictable routine (bedtimes, naps, meals and all that); as an artist I find inspiration strikes at the strangest times, at the gym or while grocery shopping, and that creativity doesn’t always line up with the parenting cycle. (For an engaging, though sometimes histrionic, exploration of the subject of art and motherhood, see Rachel Power’s The Divided Heart. Power writes eloquently on the paradoxical dilemma facing many female artists when they become mothers: they approach their creative practice with new-found determination, focus and intensity… at a period in their lives when they have very little time to produce work).

I’ve been collecting time management anecdotes from other artists, particularly those with families. Sculptor MC tells me that she was most productive when she had teenage children: she used to line up pieces of sculpture in the kitchen and sand them in between preparing the evening dinner (‘this pasta tastes gritty Mum!’) I went to a public lecture by the painter Leo Robba the other day and he spoke about snatching whatever minutes were available (at the beach, when other people were watching television) and working then. After flicking through slides of dozens of paintings, and noting the presence of hundreds more in his studio, he observed that over the years these minutes add up.