Profoundly Creative

Easter is a time of renewal, with the promise of spring bringing new life. For me, early spring is about tending the soil and planting seeds—imagining the glorious gardens of summer that inspire me to paint outdoors among the scents of flowers, bird song and the buzzing of pollinators. It doesn’t matter that my garden is about 10 feet long and carved out of rocky and weed choked soil. The point is that now is the time to plant and tend to the seeds, holding close my vision of a more beautiful future.

Gardening is a helpful metaphor for creative work. If you’re involved in the act of creation, the early stages can feel like nothing more than holding a handful of tiny, non-descript seeds. These seeds can lay dormant for years, can disperse with the wind, or be planted and nurtured. Only you know what secrets and possibilities those seeds hold in their DNA, what ideas are bound up inside and what forms they might take as you lay them in the soil and tend to their growth.

The seeds I’m planting this year relate to a project that has been laying dormant in my mind for the past few years. I’m starting to look back into my family history to trace the roots of identity and place through the lens of colonization, religion, migration, and shifting cultural values. Just like a the early stages of a garden, I don’t know exactly what form the project will take, though I have glimpses of paintings and maps and writing.

I’ve created these small mixed media seeds as the beginning of a promise to tend to this project, through the unknowns and into completion.

What creative seeds are you planting or nurturing this spring? What would you like them to grow into?

What parts of your creative garden have been resting in a fallow state and might be ready to awaken?