19 Jan Tuesday…jumping out of the box ( with visual explanation )

I am feeling the need to be creatively unboxed a bit…

I kept thinking I was going to write a New Year post…a post which would sum up how I was feeling about 2016 and what interesting stuff happened in 2015…but January came upon me, and January is basically when I feel like hibernating and, to be honest the void of the year ahead seems daunting…

I’ve also been feeling like I want to change a shape or pattern…

Creativity is such an undefined spirit…it’s something which follows you around, sits on your shoulders, wafts around your feet and then suddenly and unexpectedly, plants some seed of an idea in your head which grows at such a rate that it becomes impossible to ignore it…

The force of creativity gives me my visual voice, has helped me hone my style, and craft my table compositions… I work well with boundaries; they make me push things to the edges and keep being resourceful, which is what I love about the table, but it’s not the whole process…

I’ve used my blog to give more of a background to my table compositions and arrangements…sharing my garden and the process of it’s growth which then ends up on the table, but I’m definitely feeling that I need to share more of the complete mental picture; the whole process, influences and inspirations and creative triggers.

I have lots of different digital spaces to ‘file’ things or separate things; my 5ftinf Facebook page is purely for table compositions, my Philippa Stanton Artist Facebook page for my paintings and textural inspirations, my painting website, my Pinterest for inspiration and ideas, and obviously Instagram; different accounts for 5ftinf, my Open House and also one just for texture photos.

Steller is my current digital love outside of blogging and Instagram, partly because when I joined the app I made the decision to combine everything I did, and every week my Weekly Snaps stories I show a whole selection of what I’ve seen and where I’ve been in terms of my creative life: table compositions, mess, boring cafes, peeling paint, bike rides, my home, my studio etc ( I recently started sharing the Weekly Snaps images here on the blog too )…Steller feels like the place I’m most me and although having lots of separate ‘compartments’ for different elements of my work is really useful, I’m now at a point where I want to bring it all together a bit more…particualry on my @5ftinf Instagram account which is how that account started in the first place…
These were some of my first images on Instagram…for me it’s always been a discovery about how to capture the aesthetics I see and feel inside…( I think this is the first time the table made an appearance…)I  was having a good old look through my blog images from between about 2009 and 2011 and I was fascinated by the similarities and stark differences between then and now…

My love for taking pictures of telephone boxes has never dwindled:

( the first 2 images are from 2009 and the last one from this December just gone )

But I can also see from old images how my style has developed and how where I’ve been at in my head has informed what I do…

Looking back at old images made me find my old sketchbooks and scrapbooks from my pre digital years…

I started this scrap book in about 1988 and was fascinated to realise that what I did back then was just a different version of now…

I was always collecting images I liked from magazines and newspapers… and articles about artists and their work…I suppose these were my early version of Pinterest boards…

I also realised that I’ve been documenting my gardening pursuits since the time I first had a garden in 1996…

( these images are from 1997 and my first garden in a flat in Lewisham, London )

( and that’s Bumble…who was pre Cheeks! )

I also used to sew a lot more, and make my own clothes…I was never much good at it, but I always liked to wear stuff that I’d thought up…

for a long time sewing, fabric and colláge was my big thing…

( the images below are sewing colláges and fruit and veg watercolours from between 2001 and 2004…and with the fish one from 1997 ) painting sort of snuck in through the back door…So…I must surely have a point to all this reflection…

Well I suppose what it’s made me think is that even though I physically cringe at some of the awful photos and bizarre accompanying words I put up on my blog between 2008 and 2010, there is always a process, and that process is important, even if it’s simply to reflect on later, but the images that caught my eye back then, even though I wasn’t as deft at capturing them with my camera, have all been food for the images I create now…

I’ve realised that I’ve always collected images as well as things, and that’s what feeds my imagination. I’ve also come to feel that I want to share a bit more of that process again here on my blog and also on Instagram and Steller…and that’s something that I’m sure brand experts would probably say distracts from my ‘brand’ of the table, but in my opinion the background stuff is vital too…but branding myself doesn’t interest me nearly as much as the fear that it fastens things down…

So, basically I want to put a bit more stuff on my blog and instagram which isn’t maybe as pretty as just nature and flowers, isn’t as well formed or as a composed table, or is just something that I find interesting in the moment which maybe has some atmosphere…even if it’s a bit odd but which probably then leads to a table composition in some way…

I’ll be daring myself to put some of those different images on my Instagram feed too…it’s a funny feeling when you know you’ve created images which people love and you’re about to confuse them with rusty close ups or modern architecture, so I’ll use a hashtag #creatively_unboxed which I’d encourage anyone to use if they feel they just want to jump out of the box for a moment…when you’ve created a style it can often feel a bit restrictive, but also a bit too scary to change it or play around with it in any way, so I want to use the hashtag as my excuse to shake things up every now and then…

There will of course be flowers and the table too…that’s not going to change as that is a fundamental part of me, and the joy I get from putting those images together is something I would never have anticipated…

So I suppose this is my New Year post…just saying I want to creatively unbox myself…

I also want to share at this point some creatives on Instagram who have unwittingly inspired me to write this post; people who’s visual voice and constant visual discovery and rediscovery encourage me daily:

@sandrajuto, @famapa, @idalaerke, @elf_girl

…and for@xantheb for basically pushing my ‘go’ button last week!