Why I Make Things

Creativity and Mental Health

I’ve been painting and drawing, knitting and sewing, baking and cooking, since I was tiny.

Despite 32 years of opportunity since, the piece I’m most proud of was completed at the ripe old age of 2 and a quarter, or as I referred to myself at the time, “two and a tortoise”. This caterpillar still hangs in my parent’s kitchen.

Why do I love it?

If I’m being unkind to myself, it’s the egotist in me celebrating that I had such dexterity with a paintbrush at such a young age.

If I’m being an art historian, it’s the self-assured confidence shown in the brushstrokes, colour choices and filling the page right to the edges.

If I’m being a psychoanalyst, it’s the fact it’s painted on the back of two pieces of A4 recycled paper from my dad’s office, which showed that creativity in my childhood wasn’t rare and controlled, but loose and every day. It’s my Mum I must thank for that.

If I map my life in terms of creative output, there is a black hole in the few years before my breakdown. Which with time to reflect, comes as no surprise.

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I created until I was 18, when I completed my Art A-level. I chose to complete a degree in History of Art at a “traditional” university rather than going to art school, promising myself that I’d still get my pens and paints out. Shock, I didn’t.

After graduating I completed a MA in Design. I was making again but it came with the added stress of amassing more debt and more anxiety around bagging myself a job when my final year of higher education came to an end. The course combined creativity with business, helping students to not only develop their creative practice but how to make a living from it. A vital mix, but one which, for me, skewed my understanding of why I made things. Making became entangled with money.

My first job was at a world-renowned design agency, you could argue one of the most creative places on the planet. But I worked as a strategist and a producer, and although I really enjoyed my time there, my role (well job title at least) was to support other people’s creativity, help other people to make and be paid for it, rather than myself.

I didn’t even create behind the scenes, in my own time, at home. Because working at the forefront of design, meant creativity suddenly needed to be award-winning, headline worthy, industry leading, to have any purpose or value. Or did it?

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Then, in 2017, I had a severe mental health crisis. Plagued by self-harm, weight loss and suicidal thoughts, I was diagnosed with severe anxiety and depression which resulted in spending a fortnight in a psychiatric hospital. As I packed for my stint “inside”, I slipped my pencil case and sketchbook into my bag. I’d ignored them both for years, but somehow through the fog, they seemed essential again, and mustn’t be left behind.

Inside, I drew in my room, and I attended art therapy classes. I gave space to creating for the sake of it, for the calm and peace it could bring me. I slowly began to detach my making from money, getting a qualification or searching for acknowledgement.

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It’s not something that I solved overnight, or with two weeks on a ward. I continually have to question and unpick why I’m making something, because my rapid thoughts still escalate…

I’ve made dresses for my cousin’s daughters and then frantically researched how to sell hundreds more. I’ve made a raspberry cordial and immediately bought URLs for a website, researched re-fill packing options and vintage trucks for my imminent tour of summer festivals. I’ve played around on digital design programs and instantly researched card producers. I’ve read a book to a nephew and straight away signed up to picture book courses and attended publishing days. I’ve rejected all the above and recognised the therapeutic benefits of art, but then suddenly found myself sitting in an MA Art Psychotherapy taster day at Goldsmiths.

I have to learn (and constantly remind myself) that not everything I make has to develop into a business plan. Not everything I create has to sell. Not everything I make even has to be good, there can be terrible drawings, dropped stitches and dodgy colour choices. I can make to pass the time, to keep my hands busy, as a means of controlled meditation for a life-long fidgeter.

Picasso is famously quoted to have said “it took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.” And I think that’s the real reason I like that caterpillar so much. It’s a reminder that when I make, to channel my carefree caterpillar painting days, when the paper was cheap, the pressure non-existent and the joy evident.

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