To have lost my profession, my calling.

[LichenLights]

I am (or was) an illustrator of 28 yrs. Mostly self employed, lows and highs, but many, many highs!
Around 4 yrs ago I just lost it.
I recall feeling dug out by it and as if on a conveyor belt, so much competition, and then feeling like my work was crap. I am not famous at all, but was moderately successful for most of those years - working with pretty big companies, record labels and novelists.

What bothers me, apart from the massive drop in income, is why I don't just 'do it' anymore. I just did it by nature previously, from my teens onwards, I never had to think about it. I was multimedia, so embraced digital, traditional and video. I never had a social media following but had a lot of work and many different styles.

I just never pick up the pencil or the digital pen now. I thought it might be stress, as I lost my parents at that time, but nothing else has gone awry. So it it was stress related, why just this?

I am living on savings and need to find a regular job, but the loss of that income is huge.

I am happy to move on without it if I have to (maybe), but it feels stupid to ignore it as if it never happened either. This was my profession, and now I feel like a fake or a fraud.

I guess I will be crying into a void here, maybe it's a little too 'niche', but I would love to return to it, yet every time I think of doing it I freeze, or I can't even think of what to do. It feels foreign to me, and that makes me feel even more fed up. I an't even think of where to start.
I tried changing things up for years but nothing worked:(

Is it time to cut ties completely or try to work it out?

Creativity gets zapped with fatigue and stress.
Your pictures would make fabulous fabric designs!
Have you tried listening to music to see if that would help? I find Ludovico Einaudi is very evocative and good when I'm all created out!

There are apps that give you a random topic to draw every day, if you are disciplined about it, it can help break page blindness.
I would suspect menopause and stress, I've lost my creative desire (I am a designer by training, although hit and miss recently), I just have no desire left to pick up a pencil. The ideas are in my head but the hand to eye motivation has wandered off somewhere, probably for a sleep in a corner. I now want to create for the money, but have no desire to do it for fulfilment. HRT helped considerably, but wasn't a long term solution.

Grief can be strange. I lost my parents 6 years ago. I lost my ability to sing or dance. I didn’t even realise it at the time. I did discover creativity I didn’t know I had.. something to do with so much work by artists who have passed on, still being here and meaning something. I did take time out, wrote some poetry and self published a photo book loosely based on my experiences. I did an artist residency too and have slowly got my mojo back.. still can’t dance though!

Would like to hear more are you happy to PM? No issue if not, stuff can be too personal. I sense a shift into shorter prose there, poetry? There's something that spills out with words I think, like a delicious stream of water.

I think many artists change with time and experience, perhaps loss is pivotal?

I think that perhaps tethering ourselves to one single output or identity might be stifling, creatively. Sadly, income doesn't have that kind of breadth.

Yes, I'd love to PM you if that's ok. I actually have a good chunk of a novel idea that I tried writing too, although I've no idea who half the characters or plot are to be honest... I'd literally just written it as a steam of prose 😂 (I kind of think it's sort of reflecting my own life which is a bit sad lol)

Anyway, apologies to take over this thread in at rather selfish way from your original post! Your art is winning lots of new fans here, it's really wonderfully done. Never give up, ever 💪 💯

I am not an artist- I work in healthcare and have loved my job for 20 years. When my Dad died I completely lost my mojo with my job. The spark was gone, i was going through the motions, numb.

Out of my grief eventually came fearlessness, an awareness of time ticking away. I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to travel abroad, doing something well out of my comfort zone. It was exactly what I needed to fall in love again with my profession.

I imagine it's even more important in a creative job to keep finding inspiration, new perspectives.

Not taking over at all, it is rare to make a point of connection on MN as we are generally so quick fire and anonymous.
I love to talk about writing. Prose is good, no need to stick it into any particular format. I like a more flexible format!

I will be off to bed soon but please do Pm chat, I would love that so much!

May I suggest that you read On Not Being Able to Paint by Marion Milner?

Oh gosh, OP. I wish I could say something useful to you, but I'll just fling my own experience of this very evening at you and see if there's anything in there useful.

I'm a goldsmith. I haven't so much as sat at my bench for a year. I downed tools last Christmas and just.... stopped. Christmas is a hugely profitable time of year me traditionally - I haven't attended one single event, and so my earnings have a massive hole in them. I could be making a LOT of money through November and December, and I feel sick at the thought that I've done nothing. I haven't updated my SM for a year.

I feel like a fraud/fake/not a 'real' artisan/etc. I'm scared to even pick up my torch - I just imagine myself ruining beautiful pieces.

So. Tonight, I approached my branch for the first time in over a year. It was literally under a layer of dust. Gemstones that arrived for setting just sitting in their little boxes, just a total mess. I spend five hours very slowly dusting off the layer, cleaning my tools, handling the things I couldn't face, carefully putting all my hammers and files into their proper places, etc.

I found two boxes of half-started jewellery and some experimental non-precious pieces and hated all of it, really hated the sight of everything I've made in the last few years. I threw it all in the bin. I'd usually carefully preserve any silver and gold and put it in my scrap pot to be melted down, but I just threw the lot.

My bench now looks okay. I've got more to do tomorrow, but not much. I've got an order that I promised someone by next week. It's the first order I've accepted all year. I literally don't know how I'm going to fare when I start, but I'm going to pick up my saw and my wax and whatever else is involved and see what happens.

Sorry, I've burbled on. My main point is that touching my tools, remembering what they do, remembering what I do with them, seems to have helped a bit. I feel more creatively inspired than anytime in the last five years, but my confidence in actually working is shot.

Yes, the menopause has intervened, I think. I've also been late-diagnosed with ADHD and autism, but I thought I felt fine about everything, really.

I wish you so much luck in finding your path forward. Sorry for the me me me-ness, I honestly was trying to say something helpful, but I think I've ended up just pouring forth!

Wow, this makes so much sense, especially that weird hatred of handling the tools. I have a sense of resentment, no idea why or where it came from.

I am sorry to hear this but feel slightly less alone, and yet what do we do? I see so many creatives thriving. It doesn't help!

Have you given any thought to a career counselling service? They should be able to help you find where you can transfer your skills to and/or suggest suitable re-training.

You sound beautifully self-aware. Have you considered taking your skills in a different direction and training as an art psychotherapist?

I have art psychotherapy as a client. At one point my art psychotherapist explained to me what the training involves as it was an idea for my career too. I did not go in that direction career-wise but do have an awareness of what the training and practice entails and there is something in the way you are writing that makes me think you might be able to do it.

A first step would be to find an art psychotherapist near you and book a few sessions as a client, explaining the situation and see what unfolds.

I have myself changed careers entirely (although I did not become an art psychotherapist) and it is terribly painful but I am in a better situation for me now.

My sister is an artist, she barely keeps her head above water financially and relies on her ex-husband a lot. She can only work when the artistic muse descends and she is inspired. It’s the artistic temperament.
The thing is, the rest of us mere mortals have to get up and work, uninspired or not, because we have to eat… ( and we don’t have ex-husbands who feel guilty for finally refusing to put up with us any more.)

Embrace the new

Could you apply for something like this?
https://www.artshub.co.uk/opportunity/the-lodge-residency-2620104/

what do you think your mum and dad would be saying to you if they were here? They sound like lovely parents

Wow...Those are desolate.. Not an animal or figure there...These represent what you are probably feeling inside.

Powerful though.

Edit...like Edgar Allen Poe !

I'm as creative as a plank of wood but can relate to this. I'm sure in my case it is a meno/time of life thing. I'm a lawyer and used to be absolutely passionate about my career. I can still do the work now but the passion has gone. I don't have the same drive to give it my all. I mostly want to be left alone to read a book or just spend time by myself. I feel a bit lost, frankly. Your thread definitely resonates.

@LichenLights Your 'Desolate' landscapes are so wintry and powerful - technically very good.

They look like illustrations to Poetry - Why not give Poetry a go? Write for yourself.

The more I read, the more I think you need to revisit the grief counselling.

Would you normally - pre bereavement and pre menopause - describe yourself as a particularly negative person? Because I don't think you realise how shut down you are. Literally every constructive post that you respond to is a 'no, that's not for me, nope, I used to earn 3k, that won't work.'

I don't say that to be critical, but to encourage you to reflect on where you are, because it sounds to me like you're down the grief rabbit hole still, and you need some help to climb out. I'm no armchair psychologist but the only time you've lit up on this thread is where someone else has asked for help on their work. Something is making you push yourself and your work to the back and you're in a place where that is more comfortable than making something.

I think you need some support to get out of that hole.

Again, I'm not criticising, I'm reflecting back what I see on the thread when you take your posts as a whole.

Was that Country Living or similar? I find these kind of articles usually have a reference to "Dorothy's husband Freddie, a hedge fund manager" buried in the third or fourth paragraph 😆

I just wanted to say how much I'm getting from this thread- so great to see all these supportive, creative posters coming out of the woodwork. There have been so many thoughtful replies- so different to the "Well I'm not paying my taxes for you to mince around" kind of nastiness you see on other threads.

This is at the forefront of my mind at the moment because I have a creative/ practical job (signwriter)- it's handy because, although creativity and inspiration is important, you don't have to be original every day, you can just fall back on a tried- and tested toolkit of designs and techniques for a lot of jobs, and there's a very practical, workaday aspect to it too. But now that UC is looming the pressure is on to earn more, and I'm trying to work out ways to be able to do that around being a lone parent and not burning out (also autistic). I'm also perimenopausal and conscious of not having as much energy as I did, and having no other employable skills 😬

Gosh, you make it sound like artists are nothing more than hobbyists, you clearly don't approve of your sisters life choice either! You do realise that without artists are lives would be much duller right? That it's the very talented artists who write scripts and music scores that can really make a film or tv drama, that it's the photographers that make wildlife documentaries so watchable, that the actors give enable us a chance for down time, authors that allow us to escape into a different world and illustrators and painters who cheer up our homes with painting or jolly fabrics, they all have the ability to bring us happiness, is that so terribly bad?
As with many things in life, competition is steep, and sometimes you just need a lucky break to make it. OP is clearly talented because she has had work previously, but is currently struggling with creative output, similar to a teacher or therapist or medic losing the ability to have compassion because they are burned out and exhausted. She's not putting herself on a pedal stool wanting to be admired she just needs a place to talk, and try and get her creative mojo back, nothing wrong with that.

Our not are! Wish I could edit on the app!

Well, there's an Americanisation of creative culture, especially on social media, isn't there?? Everyone's always got to be positive, and "stoked", and inspired....ALL the time. You don't see people on Instagram going "Actually I'm not inspired at all this week and haven't created anything, I've just been sitting around on MN". But we're out there 😆