Creating Art in Crevices & Craters of Time
When we are making art we can have preconceived notions of how much time we should be dedicating to the process. It can be a disruptive model of thinking that says that a specific amount of time is needed. When in actual fact, the time that you have available to you is exactly the right amount of time for you. Because the truth is you can create in the tiniest crevices of time when you have 15 minute to yourself or huge craters of time if you have a full day or week in which to dedicate to your artistic calling.
Yet, before we make anything, in our minds we can arbitrarily decide how much time we think it will take. Or how free we are to create. If we feel time constrained and overwhelmed with what we have going on, then we will always believe that we need to clear out our diaries and block out big spaces of time before we can begin any creation process. That in itself can be a pressure when we turn up at our allotted time, diary cleared and all we feel is that we are trying to conjure up our creative juices with the Countdown clock ticking ominously behind us. For those not living in the UK, Countdown is a show where you arrange letters to form words and find numerical solutions under a loudly ticking clock. The pressure is palpable and also loud enough to understand that you do not have all the time in the world.
Alternatively, if we gave way to the idea that we can make art with any given amount of time then the pressure is off. If all the rule books of arbitrary time keeping were thrown out, we could replace them instead with the possibility that any time we have at our disposal is the exact right amount of time we need. If you find you have 15 mins every second day, then that is perfect. It doesn’t matter if you have to break down 10 hours worth of work into 15 minute increments. It’s your time and you get to play with it how you want. No crevice is too small and no crater too big; all aligned with Goldilocks’s experience, the time you have is just right.
If you happen to have large chunks of time to take part in the making of your art, that’s great too. If we are working with something that feels like it is working with us and not against us, then time can be our ally as opposed to an element which we feel we never have enough of or overwhelmed if we think there is too much of it.
How does it feel when you know that the time you have is the time you need? Nothing more, nothing less? A space in your day or week that is on your schedule and is open to you to be an artist and not concern yourself with whether the amount of time you have is right.