Seven years ago I wrote a poem on here called, ‘Finding Fluorescent Grey’.  

It was hardly a piece that was going to see me named as the next poet laureate (poetry is really not my strength), but I’ve been thinking about the message behind it a lot lately; to the point where I wanted to try and express it in a more physical form through the scribbles above.

Neither the poem nor the graphics are anything special; if anything, they would probably be the subject of ridicule by professionals (or most other people for that matter) but… they felt so good to create, and in my opinion that’s what should be the priority for any artist, be it a writer, painter or somebody on stage.

I have come across many people who admit to a thirst for being creative but barely give themselves a chance to execute their ideas under the assumption that whatever they produce will be “rubbish”.  The truth is that there is no such thing as rubbish art.  I denigrate my poem because I have read a million better pieces and recognise that there are many areas it could be improved, but I’m still satisfied that the words are an accurate reflection of something I had an overwhelming desire to express.  Likewise the graphic above required no real talent to produce but I think it represents the meaning I was trying to get at in the poem, so I’m happy.  As long as you are working towards this, it’ll never be bad art.

It’s different if you are being asked to produce, with paints and pens, an accurate depiction of something else.  In these instances, it is somewhat more justified to judge. Take that legendary, less-than-flattering portrait of Mrs Mangel from Neighbours circa 1986 as an example, ha!

But for everything else, there really are no rules, and I think that’s possibly why I get so much delight from maintaining this blog and uploading my crude cartoons to my Instagram account.  In a life governed by routines, processes and time-slots I relish my time to crawl outside of the cage and get creative, and would encourage anybody else to do so too.  It’s amazing what you can learn from it.

I guess you could say that, seven years on, I’m still in awe of the fluorescent grey…

Song of the Day:  Turtlenecked – Underwear

A sweet, soft little indie-pop song that unfortunately only lasts two minutes.  Really lovely listening, especially for cold Winter evenings.