I guess most artists will tell you that they need a space in time to create. As with any creative process, it’s difficult to do it in fits and starts. Even constructing a sentence needs a moment of quietude. An interruption in the middle of crafting something can set you back completely.

My beloved and I turned our dining room into a studio for a few days recently. We needed lots of light, so every lamp in the house was requisitioned for the purpose, and all the light shades taken off. I created a playlist for the process, filled with deeply passionate songs that would elicit a creative response from each of us.

I’m not a great artist – abstract is more my line, but my beloved is quite brilliant and I always seethe with jealousy when he dabs a couple of bits of paint seemingly at random and a hand or a face emerges. It’s simply not fair. But, I managed to create a passable painting of a naked woman demurely looking over her shoulder. Not ‘bits’ were exposed, just mere suggestion. My artwork never quite turns out the way I envisage, though. It always seems to develop a life of its own, demanding to be blue instead of white, or darker than originally intended. What should have been a relatively stark sketch-like outline turned into a full colour rendering complete with a blue background and bright flower. I like it though.

The dining room is still half a studio as I wait for my beloved to complete his masterpiece (a bit like a puzzle, there’s a dab here and a dab there as he passes by on the way to the kitchen).

It interesting, though, how art – or the way each of us creates art – is indicative of how we view life. I want to get it all finished immediately and become quite impatient when things don’t get done immediately. As a self-professed hippy, it’s astonishing to me that I can be so intense about getting to the finish line. I wonder sometimes if I’m not truly in touch with myself or if life circumstances have dictated a second self, one who must get on with it.

Perhaps that’s true – and perhaps the things we’re attracted to deep down, the things we create or fantasise about reveal the true nature of who we are. Perhaps we should all spend more time really looking at what we’re drawn to (in a movie, a book, a piece of music or artwork) and let free that person inside us. Masks are pretty prevalent in the world and as much as we all like to think we’re free of such subterfuge, perhaps nobody is.

I propose to try to expose more of the me inside and pander less to the me who seems to take over most of the time.

Maybe I won’t finish this post. Just leave it like this