It’s difficult to play a sport or a board game with rules; guides for things you can and can’t do, time limits, a definition of what’s in and out of bounds. It’s these limits that make the game or sport fun to play. The same goes with creative work.

I do my best work when I’m bound by rules: a deadline, a limited set of materials, a limited colour palette, a limited surface on which to create. All of these limits are useful boundaries that help guide and inform the choices about what I make and why.

You’d think that, to have more energy for creative work, one would need to conserve or ‘save it up’ from other areas of life. An ‘easy’ or ‘boring’ day job should mean that when I clock off at 5pm, I’m raring to go with creative energy for my own projects. But it doesn’t work that way.

It’s a bit like running a 40km marathon. I’m not more likely to run one well if, in preparation, I sat on the couch to conserve my energy for a week. I need to work up to it with consistent and routine work.

What my creative work seems to need is something comfortably uncomfortable. A day job that is stimulating, intellectual, and collaborative but with little emotional labour. This combination keeps my brain and heart warm so that when ‘personal’ time arrives, I’m more likely to be able to run the marathon it takes to make great art because I’ve already been on a slow jog.

I am growing fonder of in-person energy; that physical, three-dimensional, multi-sensory experience of another person. I find that I’m walking away from 1:1 encounters with more energy and enthusiasm for myself and my art practice. It doesn’t matter if I’ve been helped or if I’m the one who did the helping, it’s the same. I walk away ‘better’, more ‘full’. It’s the complete opposite feeling I have when I interact with someone online. So why would I do the latter?

Calling something ‘done’ is difficult. When I embark on a new art project, I have a loose idea of what ‘done’ could be. But there’s no specific, measurable, or consistent criteria.

One one hand, ambiguity is necessary because it provides space for natural curiosity that needs to be present in the process of making. Ambiguity allows discovery.

On the other hand, infinite discovery without closure leaves me with a feeling of stagnation, incompleteness, of circling but never coming down to land. That’s tiring.

Calling something ‘done’ means accepting, most often, imperfection. When something is done, it’s often not as good as I imagined it would be. It almost always never fully scratches the itch I had that made me begin the work in the first place.

But calling something ‘done’ gives me permission. Permission to stop, rest, come up for air, reflect, or learn something about myself and my work that I didn’t know before. It’s with *that* that I become better positioned to go on my next discovery; to further, deeper, and more interesting places than before.

There seems to be two ways I make marks. The first way is ‘competently’. This involves multiple pencil sketches to mould/sculpt a drawing to get it where I want it to be. The lines are sketchy, the paper is often rubbed raw with eraser marks, but the lines are where I imagined them to be. It also means there is often a ‘stiffness’ in the drawing.

The second way of approaching mark making is ‘confidently’. A single stroke, no erasing, just a mark on a page. If that mark lands where I intend it to, great! But it often doesn’t. Instead of reaching for the eraser, the process becomes more about how I react to that mark. With a ‘confident’ approach, the next mark needs to be one made in relation to what’s already on the page because it’s no longer about what I can see in my head, it’s only about what’s on the page.

The ‘confident’ approach means a ‘less accurate’ drawing compared to what I imagined it to be but it also means a more free/open/unpredictable drawing and for me, a more interesting one.

Perhaps if I spend more time practicing confident lines over competent ones, the confident ones may increasingly land where I intend them to and the best of both worlds will appear on the page.

Some days I’m too tired to write or draw. Some days I’ve got other things I need to do or would rather be doing. Some days, I just don’t feel like it. But that’s also true of when I show up to my day job except, I always do, and I get the work done, whether I feel like it or not. Maybe it’s the same with my art-making?

I’ve had certain ideas burning a hole in my brain for a while. I think they’re good ideas, but I’m not sure so I haven’t spent the energy on drawing them. They are ‘great ideas… in theory’.

Truth is, I’m afraid that when I start them, I’ll discover that I’m not up to the task: I don’t have the skills yet to realise them as well as I can imagine them. So, in some ways, it’s safer not to try. If I don’t try they can remain great ideas… in theory.

But ideas that aren’t made can’t be shared and ideas that can’t be shared don’t help anyone. They can’t inform or entertain an audience and without that, I don’t learn if that great idea in theory is also a great idea in reality.

If I try to realise a great idea and learn that I’m not skilled enough to translate that idea into reality, I will have learned something. But, if it turns out I am able to take that idea and make it well, I will have also learned something. By learning anything I will have more information to decide on what’s next; either develop the skills I don’t have so that I can make turn the idea into reality, or build on the success of the original work and make something even more ambitious next.

By taking the ‘risk’ of starting, exploring, and finishing, I’m better able to understand which great ideas (in theory) will make better ones in reality. Over time, that’s likely to lead to better & more interesting work that’s more likely to inform or entertain an audience. I like those chances.

A chair is for sitting, obviously. But then, what’s sitting for? Why sit at all? In fact, why me?

Sometimes, understanding ourselves – what we do and why we do it in the way that we do it – isn’t easy. The world is full of self-help books that promise to help a person discover their “why” or “purpose”. But this is where an older writer may be of use.

Aristotle’s four causes* may be a neat way to investigate any ‘why’ type of question. It may not be perfect, but it also may not need to be. For any ‘thing’ that exists (like a chair), Aristotle implores ask to us a few questions.

1. What is it? Aristotle describes this as his ‘formal’ cause. In our case, well, we’ve already described it. A chair.
2. What is it made of? Aristotle calls this his ‘material’ cause. If the chair I’m thinking about is a wooden chair, then it’s material cause is a tree..
3. How did it go from wood to a chair? This is Aristotle’s ‘formal cause’. Or, ‘how did this chair form’. In the chair’s case, it required skills and labour of a furniture maker to transform a pile of wood into this chair..
4. What is its good? Or, it’s ‘final cause’. In other words, why does this chair exist? Which brings us back to the original answer – for sitting, right? But then, what’s sitting for?.

The idea of following this thread of understanding the world better is that it’s a guide for helping us make more intentional and thoughtful decisions. In my case, I did just buy a new chair, and it was expensive, so shouldn’t I know what sitting is for?

Sitting, for me, is necessary to remain comfortable, to rest, and prevent injury. And why is this important? So that I can spend as much time making books and writing stories that inform or entertain people? Why? Because I believe that stories are the perfect vehicle to move hearts and minds towards things that I think are important in a community – kindness, compassion, generosity and patience. And, as I write those words, I may have stumbled across something that sounds like a purpose. An answer to the question, “why me?”

*It’s worth noting that the definition of ‘cause’ in Aristotle’s time is a little different to how we think about it today. Cause in Aristotle’s time was less about ‘causation’ and more about an ‘explanation’… a ‘why’.

Many years ago, I described a series of unlikely coincidences to a First Nations artist I was having a drink with. It was mostly about how my art practice, over a period of 10 years, provided me with opportunities outside of art but, remarkably, aligned with my core values. After I finished telling her the story, she replied with some simple words: “Matt, they aren’t coincidences. The ancestors are speaking.”

As someone who deeply values scientific inquiry and knowledge, I’ve always interpreted events that lack any obvious causal connection as the chaotic nature of the universe. That if I just keep making work and the world keeps turning, atoms will continue to crash into each other in interesting ways and create chain reactions of other events, which will lead to others, and so on. Occassionally, those chain reactions will provide me with an experience; both good ones and bad ones.

In many ways, it’s a comfortable way to live – I can do what I do, and we’ll just see what happens. Take it as it comes. Roll with the punches. But, this approach to life is also (largely) a passive one.

What my friend touched on from a First Nations viewpoint is what Carl Jung would call “synchronicity.” The idea that events can appear meaningfully related to one another even if they lack a discoverable causal connection.

Science can’t prove or disprove synchronicity because it’s not observable using scientific methods of 3rd party inquiry. You either believe in synchronicity or you don’t.

The longer I practice art, the more I see the chain reaction of events that stem from doing the work. The louder the voice of the ancestors become. My growing acknowledgement of synchronicity has got me out of my comfort zone and has caused me to take action in ways that a belief in chaos has not. The more I’m listening to the ancestors, the more I feel guided by them and, in turn, the clearer the path seems.

In the end, if I can tell myself a more meaningful story because of a belief in synchronicity which in turn provokes more positive action than a belief in chaos, then perhaps that’s all that matters, whether science agrees or not.

Most of the time, the question “Can I do this?” denotes the start of any project. Last night it was, “Can I design 50 monsters?” But it can be anything… Can I draw something from an unusual or extreme angle or point of view? Can I make a sausage look cute? Can I give buttered toast a personality?

Most of the time, once I begin the mark-marking process to try to answer this original question, new questions emerge because of the mark marking that’s happening in front me. New questions replace the original one.

This process doesn’t make the original question less important or one I won’t answer in the end anyway. In fact, it’s quite contrary because it’s the question that got me started, which is the most important part of the process.