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Category: Creative Life

How to live with Creativity (as a human)

Published March 15, 2016March 15, 2016 by Emily Jeffords in Creative Life

The official launch of @DoitfortheProcess!

Published February 1, 2016January 31, 2016 by Emily Jeffords in Creative Life, Inspiration Board

A Trip to the Museum & Why We Do it for the Process

Published January 31, 2016January 31, 2016 by Emily Jeffords in Creative Life, Inspiration Board

Instagram for Creatives Class

Published January 14, 2016January 14, 2016 by Emily Jeffords in Creative Life

12 Things Being an Artist Taught Me in 2015

Published January 2, 2016January 4, 2016 by Emily Jeffords in Creative Life, Inspiration Board

The Season of Rest

Published December 27, 2015January 2, 2016 by Emily Jeffords in Creative Life, Inspiration Board

Carving Out Time for Art (an interview)

Published December 9, 2015December 8, 2015 by Emily Jeffords in Creative Life

A Day in my Life

Published October 27, 2015October 27, 2015 by Emily Jeffords in Creative Life

Waiting for newness

Published September 23, 2015September 23, 2015 by Emily Jeffords in Creative Life

How to come back to the process

Published September 9, 2015September 11, 2015 by Emily Jeffords in Creative Life

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Exciting news: NEW PRINTS coming to the collection on Thursday! Hooray! These pieces are from my last collection (the New Life Collection) and are looking sooo lovely. In case you didn’t know, I’m a bit of a perfectionist — especially when it comes to reproductions! These beauties are created on canvas so nice studio visitors literally mistake them for original FREQUENTLY. 😍

I’m happy to be here, breaking in my brushes, reestablishing my creative rituals (which now includes bouncing a babe and drinking kombucha) and making messes. Yep, that’s all. Just messes today. I’ll make something lovely another day & that’s fine with me. It’s all a part of the process. Some pieces fail and some succeed. Some have a loooong “rough” phase, while some look good all along the way. 🌿 I am not as in control as I would like to think and I’m learning to be fine with that. To release and enjoy. 🌿 The process has a mind and life of its own sometimes and it is alllll beautiful. #doitfortheprocess

We pulled over during our drive to Glen Coe, seeing this stunning valley along the side of the slender highway. The green, misty, coolness of it was breathtaking and we got out of the car to be a part of it for a while. We were enjoying the peace that felt so natural in the landscape when suddenly two massive aircraft BLAZED through the valley, low and fast in a mountain train training mission. Dan was familiar with this exercise (he was in the Air Force for years) but it was such a shocking juxtaposition to the serenity we were feeling we could only stand awestruck (and SO thankful we had put the drone away — it would have been decimated like a fly!) // I'm taking inspiration from this landscape as I paint today. Well, the scene you see here at least. …probably going to leave the fighter plane drama out of it this time. 😂

I began my creative career (for real) in 2009, when the internet was small and it seemed that my faint voice could be heard, I began painting each day and sharing those paintings on my tiny blog. The subject matter varied and was nearly entirely up to me (though I did take a few strange commissions) and I found myself drawn wholeheartedly to nature: landscapes, flowers, scenes of nature within cityscapes... I painted in a window-lined room in our rented 1930’s home while my first babe learned to crawl and then to walk; each day, painting, painting, painting. Some things have changed (my ability feels more sure, the price of the my work has gone up a bit, and my daughter has grown into a lady who now helps me in the studio in a way that is actually helpful ☺️) but many things are still the same. I still paint out of a deep love for nature, peace, and still find the pursuit of the process endlessly satisfying, I still long for personal & creative growth and am still using my feeble voice — though often it feels less heard and like the room I am speaking in is far noisier. So often I still feel just like that new mama, cracking open her art-school paints, trying things out for the world to see. #doitfortheprocess

Some places change you (maybe all of them, actually, if only because they open your vision of the world with every small step). I often wish to fly over the entire globe so that I can at least see all of the world from that view. ☺️ I sat on the edge of the water and emptied my mind of all thoughts and stresses and filled it with only a still, underlying thankfulness. I know this is an odd rendering of this landscape (it is usually far grayer and deeper and less sunny), and I’m definitely going to attempt painting it AND the feelings I had in it. I’ll be back in the studio TOMORROW after a nice long break and I’m quite excited to wet my brushes again. 🙌🏽

As I feed my babe (feeling the life & energy leave my body and enter his) I realize I feel similarly about my creative life: the practice of creating, running a business, making stuff and sharing it, staying tuned in to it all (All. The. Time.) it can be just as life-giving & and soul draining as nourishing a babe. 🌱 I feel older than I think I should at 32; the waves of energy feel shorter and more intense (like I know what to do with them now but they’re not as long or frequent as they once were), and I am beginning to realize that I need to protect and nourish my creativity more than ever. 🍀 Over the next few months and years, I hope you find me resting and savoring more, traveling for pleasure and finding small joys at home, enjoying long dinners with loved ones, painting out of pure delight in the process... And I hope you DON’T find all of these joys on social media - because something about the act of sharing can diminish the spontaneity of true joy at times. 🌿 In light of this week’s losses, I hope we all take pause and turn inward for a moment. Check yourself and check what you’re working towards. 🍃 May you be well. May you be happy. May you be peaceful. May you be loved.

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