Welcome to The Enduring Creative.
This publication aims to highlight the indelible human desire to create, with the focus firmly placed on those who take the long way round.
The merging of technology and creativity, while it can lead to vast developments simply cannot be put into the same category as the Sistine Chapel. Painted while hoisted precariously above the floor, with no electrical light, no digital scan to lay the proportions out and with such depth and hidden knowledge. It asks the question, “Do we marvel at the finished product because it is beautiful or because it is beauty created by the human hand and mind?”. There will always be advancements made, new materials to use, but this publication is about looking back. Back through the annals of time and inwards towards the human soul.
Why do we create, what are we needing to express and why is the art of failure so vital to the process of creativity? For many creatives it is often in the process that they find what they are looking for. Speaking as a creative myself I know that I am far less attached to the final product than I am the process of getting there. For me that is where true creation lies. Hidden for the most part, so rarely seen. The price tag in a gallery only hints at its existence. The final piece is often far less valuable than the pencils sketches and hours of thinking and failure it took to get there.
I am dyslexic with a mild sprinkling of adhd (lower case intended) thrown in for good measure. I am personally of the options that think there should be a place on the spectrums that instead simply reads ‘Creative’. While I do allow the built-in auto correct to do its job there will never be any ai employed within my work or this publication. I need to know that some things can still be marvelled at as a feat human endeavour. For this reason you’ll likely find mistakes - my pencil marks shared. I employ no editor and shall inevitably make mistakes. But what a rarity these days! This is created, for now, by one person on a quest to share, and to revere the human creative hand and soul, to honour the late nights and furrowed brows, to see the mistakes, the work, and to focus less upon the final piece, which is quickly losing it’s meaning in the modern age of quick results. This publication shares the work, the messy and the vulnerable. The simple, the unsung. It is not aiming to be avant grade and edgy. There is no need to illicit an extreme response. Instead it is showcasing the authentic life of a creative. To not have to understand all we see, to not be told by established critics what this or that creative mind was thinking, but to be left to simply observe it, perhaps be inspired. So pull up and chair and peruse at your leisure, absorb the space, mistakes and all. Thank you for your company,
Jo
If you’d like to read more about why I created this space, then below is ‘Dearest’, a letter sent to an imagined friend explaining the disillusionment with the modern world and how as a creative I found another way to thrive.
“The cushions smell of faded cigars and juniper berries, the carpets bearing the pathway of creatives searching for inspiration...”