The Joy of Creating

Paint, Yarn, Words, and a Little Perspective

I have come to realize that I am happiest when I am making something.

Sometimes it is a painting. Sometimes it is crochet. Sometimes it is writing. Apparently, one creative outlet was not enough. It is nice to be able to pick up another when I have exhausted my interest in one for the day but have not yet satisfied the urge to make something.

Painting, especially, makes me a little giddy. I love playing with color—hues, values, light, shadow, texture. I love mixing paint and seeing what happens. Sometimes it is exactly what I was hoping for. Sometimes I create a color that closely resembles mud. After producing countless batches of mud, I bought a paint-mixing recipe book. Who knew such a book existed?

Then there is that wonderful moment when something begins to work and I think, Oh. I am starting to get this. That feeling usually lasts until I discover six more things I don’t know how to do.

Oddly enough, I love that part, too. There is always another technique to learn, another way to create texture, another color combination to try. I can lose a perfectly good afternoon trying to figure out how someone created a particular effect or watching someone on YouTube make three casual brushstrokes that I cannot reproduce after forty-five minutes of concentrated effort. Everything looks easy on YouTube. I now know better.

Part of the pleasure is figuring out what to do when something is not working. I can change the color, scrape something back, add texture, paint over part of it, or try something I have never done before. Sometimes the solution turns out to be better than what I originally planned.

I am becoming much less afraid of making mistakes, and I think painting has had a lot to do with that. A mistake no longer necessarily means I ruined something. It may just mean that I have to respond to what is actually there instead of what I intended to be there. That is a surprisingly liberating shift, and I am beginning to suspect that I am learning something here that has very little to do with paint.

Of course, there is still a little rush when I step back from a painting and really like what I see. I made that. It does not have to be perfect. In fact, I am not sure I would know what perfect was. There is something deeply satisfying about taking an idea, a photograph, a color combination, or something I have noticed in the world and turning it into something of my own.

I also love buying the stuff.

Paints, brushes, canvases, mediums, pens, papers, palette knives. I love learning about color theory, trying different brushes, and finding out what happens when I use something in a way I have not tried before. This makes Michaels and Blick Art Materials dangerous places.

The problem is that very little seems terribly expensive by itself. A tube of paint. A brush. A canvas. Some gel medium. Maybe a pen I have absolutely no use for at the moment but which seems likely to become important later. Somehow, twelve inexpensive things are no longer inexpensive once they are placed together in a bag.

Pinterest is no help, either. I have boards called Painting Ideas, Painting Techniques, Textures, Doors and Windows, Architecture, Artsy Fartsy, Birds, and Photography, among others. I save colors, surfaces, shapes, buildings, paintings, photographs, and odd little things that catch my attention.

I have also noticed that creating has changed the way I look at the world. I am particularly drawn to pattern and texture, so I notice old doors, peeling paint, stone walls, feathers, tiles, tree bark, fabric, shadows on buildings, and clouds. Things I might once have walked past now make me stop and wonder how I would paint them. Creativity has made me pay closer attention.

Crochet scratches much the same itch, only with yarn. I love choosing colors and patterns, and there is something almost magical about watching an object emerge stitch by stitch from what was once just a ball of yarn. The repetition is rhythmic and tactile, and once I get into it, my hands seem to know what to do while everything else gets quieter.

Of course, there is always the occasional moment when I look down and realize I missed a stitch three rows ago. A brief period of denial follows. It is not a mistake, I tell myself. Then comes bargaining. Will anyone even notice if I don’t point it out? Usually, I decide they will not and carry on.

Painting, crochet, and writing all do something similar to my attention. When I am fully absorbed in one of them, I am not replaying yesterday or mentally organizing tomorrow. I am with the paint, the yarn, or the words in front of me. I lose track of time. I slow down.

I have noticed that I can still become anxious to finish, especially with painting. I want to know what it is going to become. I want to get to the point where I can step back and say, There. But creating does not always cooperate with that. Sometimes the piece needs more time than I want to give it. Sometimes I need to stop fiddling with it and let it sit. Sometimes I have to admit that I do not yet know what it needs.

That may be part of why I like it so much. Creating asks me to stay with what is happening rather than rush ahead to the finished product.

It also asks me to move back and forth between the small pieces and the whole.

When I am painting, I can become completely preoccupied with one little section of the canvas. Is the color right? Is the value right? Does that shadow work? Then I step back several feet and look at the entire painting again. Something that seemed enormously important from six inches away may barely matter at all from across the room.

Crochet is much the same. Up close, there are individual stitches, little imperfections, and perhaps a suspicious area where I am fairly sure I counted incorrectly. Step back, and what I see is the pattern.

Writing may be where I notice this most.

Writing is one of the ways I make sense of things. I may begin with a memory, an observation, an emotion, or something that has been rolling around in my head that I cannot quite understand. At first, I am about eight inches away from it. I am still inside the memory or feeling. I am seeing it from exactly where I stood when it happened, and I am searching for words that accurately describe what I felt or what occurred.

Then I begin to write. I describe it, move things around, change a word, remember something I had forgotten, and sometimes see a connection I had never noticed before. Little by little, I get farther away from it.

Eventually, I can see it from 3,000 feet. I can see what came before and what came after. I can see how it connects with things I know now that I did not know then. The experience itself has not changed, but the view has.

I think painting and crochet give me a version of that same experience. Up close, there are brushstrokes, stitches, colors, mistakes, corrections, and small decisions. Then I step away and see what all those little pieces have become.

Maybe that is one of the things I love most about creating. It gives me both views. I can become completely absorbed in one tiny detail, and then I can step back and see the whole. One does not make the other less important. They simply tell me different things.

There is certainly pleasure in finishing something and thinking, I really like this. But I am not sure the finished product is even the best part anymore. So much of the joy is in becoming absorbed enough to lose track of time, learning something I did not know before, trying something new, messing it up, changing course, and trying again.

And every so often, surprising myself.

Creativity keeps me curious. There are colors I have not mixed yet, techniques I have not learned, patterns I have not tried, and stories I have not figured out how to tell. There is still so much to make.

And more art supply shopping to do.

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Janet Nash, MSW, LISW-S, Yoga Therapist, CCTP, is a psychotherapist, writer, and founder of Interiority Wellness. Her work explores mental health, generational healing, creativity, nature, and the quiet ways we find our way back to ourselves.