Your Best Self Must Share Your Studio With Your Inner Depressed Artist. Create a closing blessing ritual for the studio to make it a safe welcoming place in case you feel low the next day.
What is the culture of your studio? Is it a place to have discipline and work ethic? Where you compare yourself and your art to what you wish it would be and fret about how you are falling short? A place of inadequacy and laziness? That might be how it feels when you are depressed.
So dear one, let’s change that.
Think of your most fragile, broken, disappointed artistic self. No motivation, feeling down, unable to work, unable to play, messy, dusty and abandoned.
That depressed self must also feel comfortable in your studio. That sad hopeless wretch – it is her space too. It should be just as welcoming to her as it is to you when you are bustling with energy and alive with inspiration. Both creatures share this sacred space and if the energy of your studio only welcomes your most successful and driven version, it will not be a safe space for your inner artist when she is not well and needs love and support.
When you are at your most motivated, you probably leave a mess. There is no comfortable place to sit because it is covered with sketches or wet paintings needing a space to dry. Brushes left in dirty water, caps left off tubes, excited writing and sketches that might be overwhelming and intimidating to your depressed side. Unfinished work she doesn’t know how to reenter, lacking the confidence to contribute anything of value.
May I gently suggest that you be considerate of this other dark creature who shares this creative space? What does she need to feel welcome? Can you clean up after yourself when you are high energy, so your low energy self isn’t the Cinderella, left to clean up after the party she doesn’t feel invited to?
If you are like me, you might not know when depression will hit. Perhaps before your high energy persona leaves the studio, she takes some time, a closing ritual if you will, to make your studio safe in case your depressed persona arrives. A welcome gift! Something to read, a lovely book from the high shelf you don’t have the patience for, a queue of videos you can’t sit still for, a clean stack of paper and a clear space at the table for some abstract backgrounds she can mindlessly create for your delight when you return. A recorded meditation to help her feel she is welcome and cherished. A love letter! A stack of unfinished paintings you don’t mind her “ruining.” Invite her to write you a note about what it is like to be there when you are not, to suggest changes you can make for her.
Be on her side. Welcome her.