By Sarah Rychtarova
March 2022
“And the day came when the risk to remain tight as a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Anais Nin
Creating for the sake of creating is a hard choice. Making that choice is also a painful process. We think we need to be good at what we choose to do or see our obligations with work and family as priority. We put these requirements in front of our desires, passions and yearnings. Yet, if we allowed time to play with ideas, materials, processes, what would we be making or writing through experimentation and play? For me, being outdoors, observing nature, feeling the elements and witnessing cyclic time is inspiration to weave a harmonious bridge between my creativity and nature so that all of these aspects become my nature. I’m currently working on ceramic swallow nests, which give me great pleasure to think that I may be contributing to endangered wildlife habitats whilst being creative, experimental and playing with clay simultaneously.
Creating, without knowing truly if it will touch others reminds me of a passage I read in ‘Women who Run with the Wolves’: Storyteller and poet, Clarissa Pinkola Estes uses an eloquent analogy of the creative force as water waiting to flow from deep reservoirs over the terrain of our psyche:
“Once that great underground river finds its estuaries and branches in our psyches, our creative lives fill and empty, rise and fall in seasons just like a wild river… Creating one thing at a certain point in the river feeds those who come to the river, feeds creatures far downstream, yet others in the deep… That is why beholding someone else’s creative word, image, idea, fills us up, inspires us to our own creative work.”
P298, Women Who Run with the Wolves, 2008, Rider Books.
To be human is to be creative. If we deny our creativity in whatever form we wish it to be, we are also denying someone, even ourselves, the experience of being inspired or uplifted by what we could be creating. How can we possibly resist this creative force when it feeds all who tap into it? Observing the daffodils appear from the darkness underground since December last year slowly… slowly… slowly forming and opening, I feel their palpable tension, their hesitancy and anticipate their joy at blossoming to their fullness. I can transpose those sentiments to my own creative interaction with the world, allowing myself to take up the space that is my place to fill. Spring is not a time to be a shrinking violet!
Let’s be true to ourselves, bring our talents out, and subdue that critical voice that tells us we aren’t good enough at what we do, or we don’t have time, or we have more important things to do. What’s more important than feeding your psyche and soul with that underground river that also feeds others further downstream? Today is the day!
Sarah Rychtarova is a visual artist. Her blog page ‘Weaving a Bridge’ can be found on her website. To pre-order a swallow nest £25 + P&P, DM on Instagram or write a message here.
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