Enjoy the fruits of your Creativity

Hello!

Lughnasadh (Lammas) has arrived. Lughnasadh is a Gaelic festival, while Lammas is Anglo Saxon/Christian. Although distinctly different festivals, they both commonly signify the partaking of the first fruits of the year’s harvest. 

Bread Products

Lammas means “loaf mass”, which fits in well with my recent attempts at making sourdough. I know… I know… it was a big thing during lockdown, but I’ve never been one to follow fads. However, I was recently gifted a casserole dish, and I now have a better chance of succeeding in baking a decent loaf. 

I’ve got a fair few different recipes for sourdough baking (luckily, not from websites where you’re forced to scroll through the baker’s life story and a hundred photos of the same loaf of bread from every conceivable angle). But if you have one that’s pretty foolproof (I am a fool when it comes to bread making), please let me know! 

Enjoying the fruits of our creativity

I am an advocate of enjoying the process rather than focusing on the end product when it comes to my creativity. However, I do find enjoyment in looking at my artwork or reading one of my stories and thinking, ‘Actually, that’s bloody good, Emma.’ 

What also helps is keeping a record of my progress. Keeping old first drafts or taking photos as a painting takes shape shows how the seed of an idea bore fruit. Historically, too. I’ve got creative projects from twenty years ago. No matter how cringy they are now, I can see what I got right and where I’ve improved since then.

I encourage fellow creatives to take the time to sit and read one of your stories or look at a piece of your artwork and fully appreciate it in the way it is meant to be. Let the author/artist take a backseat and consume it as a reader/viewer. Lately, I’ve been reading an old WIP which was set on the back burner and really enjoying it. 

Here are some of my recently completed artworks.

Rev. Hawker 

What if I told you there was once a Cornish priest who dressed as brightly as Tom Bombadil and had a penchant for opium and writing poetry from a small hut he built from shipwrecked timbers? He also liked cats, although he did excommunicate his own when it kept killing mice on Sundays. He also wrote what came to be Cornwall’s national anthem. And he created what we now know as the harvest festival. 

I wrote a blog about him if you’re interested to learn more.

Cornish Gig Rowing

This month, I also joined the local pilot gig rowing club. This is part fitness, part social, part competitive and part local tradition. Gig vessels have a six-oar crew and one coxswain. They first appeared in the 17th century and were used to ferry harbour pilots to larger vessels, who aided in navigating the ship into the harbour. The Cornish coast is notorious for its dangerous waters. Pilot gig crews were in high demand, and it was usually the first gig on the scene which won the work. Now a modern competitive sport, gig racing was the norm, even back then. 

They were also the pioneers of the lifeboat service and would come to the aid of ships in distress or floundering sailors in the briny surf. Illegally, the gigs were also very handy for landing smuggled contraband. Something the Cornish grew apt in doing! 

The invention of the motor boat meant the end of the gig. But it lives on in the form of rowing clubs, with the vast majority based in Cornwall. 

I am still learning the ropes. But maybe I’ll be one day good enough to race in the World Pilot Gig Championships on the Isles of Scilly. 

Want to see my stuff before everyone else? Head to my Ko-Fi page!

I’ve revived my Ko-Fi page as a place where I drop regular sketches, words and works in progress. It felt like a good home for it. Blogging on my website would get too busy, while on social media sites it tends to get lost. 

It’s all free to look at, but any donations help keep me stocked up in paints and canvases (and copious amounts of tea). 

What creative fruits have you been enjoying? Do you have any you want to share?

Love,

Emma