The love of creation is my motivation.

“The two terrors that discourage originality and creative living are fear of public opinion and undue reverence for one’s own consistency.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am trying to be an artist.

I am an artist.

Am I an artist?

What the hell.

I draw. Not as much as I’d like to. The art of acknowledging that there’s always distractions, but the ability to get on with it anyway.

I know I can draw. But I think I am similar to a lot of other creative people who suffer from a lack of faith in their own abilities.

The Ambition: To be a full time artist.

The Reality: I sit in a room with paper and pens and try to find anything else I can do instead. Even the dishes needing done seem more appealing at times.

I have a pile of unfinished drawings.

Money is not an incentive for my art. In fact sometimes it hinders my abilities. Money is not my motivation.

The love of creation is my motivation.

No matter what you create, we all need motivation to get it done. Whether your meditation is cooking, drawing, dancing, cycling, sailing, walking or whatever else, we all need to be driven to do it, often the struggle of doing it is highly outweighed by the feeling of achievement or satisfaction.

I’m just finding it to be a struggle at the moment and it feels like I have so many commissions to do, and I really need to start planning and get an organised system in place. Is this just supposed to come naturally to me?

Well, no, I’m pretty sure it is supposed to be difficult, because I’m learning that all of the best and most worthwhile things in life usually are.

So, I’ve changed things up a bit lately. I’m not at home just now because I ran away to a beautiful place called Plockton in Wester Ross, about three weeks ago. I love my hometown and all of my friends are the most fantastic, funny and beautiful people. But I had to get out. Sometimes you get stuck in a bit of a rut and need some breathing space, a change of scenery, new faces, new places (and some sailing races.)

As I’m writing I even feel like my writing isn’t even flowing as well as normal, and I’m really forcing it, but this is what I’m talking about. It’s hard and you have to force it sometimes to get the natural flow back, kinda like unblocking a drain i guess.

Plockton is an amazing, friendly and beautiful place where my mum and dad met 40 years ago.

Maggie, my mum, was working in the Plockton Hotel and my dad Peter, was a storm-bound sailor who went to the pub to sing a few tunes with his guitar. Getting plied with booze from a member of staff who was obviously a wee bit taken with his folksy tunes and rugged beard, Petey and Mags soon became a bit of an item!

Ever since I was born, I’ve been coming to Plockton during the holidays with my family. It’s a beautiful sailing village about four and a half hours away from Glasgow. It’s full of lovely folk and there’s a great sense of community and security here. The bay is nice and sheltered and full of boats, not to mention the beautiful palm trees lining the main road, Harbour Street.

When here, we usually stay here with our second family, The Mackenzies. Calum runs Calum’s Seal Trips and this trip, I’ve been staying next door with two of my friends, Malcolm and David. This year Malcolm was the Commodore, which basically means the president of the sailing club, so he was really busy during Regatta, which is a series of sailing races that take place over a two week period. The regatta is ended of with lots of celebrating: a concert, awards presentation and ceilidh in the village hall on the last Friday, and then the next day a Ragamuffin race

(A fun race for the local kids where they design their own topical sails and are judged on them) followed by dancing in the main street, into the wee hours, where everyone ends up in the local Inn jumping around to the sounds of the local fling band.

I love it here and although I haven’t been super creative, it has been really great to be out in the fresh air, socializing and being far out of the way of Paisley. I’ll be home next week though, motivated and refreshed and ready to put my plans into action.

Sometimes it is okay to feel like you are doing nothing. More often than not, that is exactly what we need. Time to reflect and look at what aspects of our lives aren’t serving us anymore and what areas require change. I think we are made to feel so bad sometimes by society for not doing certain things. We all need a break from the daily pressures of modern life.

Follow your heart, feel no guilt, and be honest and kind. You never know when your time is up so don’t waste it on negative emotions. Worrying is a waste of time.

Act with kindness and love and you simply cannot go wrong.

Most definitely one of my favourite and yet one of the simplest affirmations to keep in mind every day:

“Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.” – Dalai Lama

Much love and light from beautiful Plockton.

You can get in touch with me about artwork through the blog contact page or have a look at current and past work on my Facebook page.