I’ve accepted that the best time to be creative is when the sun has got out of my way.
For the majority of my life, daylight has primarily been occupied by two components: education and jobs. As neither of these remotely related or relate to art, my compartmentalised artist life has taken place outside of business hours. Like a lot of creative types, our art is not always our main source of income which induces a tension between the necessity of surviving to feed ourselves and the responsibility of creating to feed our souls. I come from a very working class background, born and raised in Leicester, and I pay for my life and rent in London by working as a freelancer in marketing. It’s important for me to share my realities of being an artist because the context that people are in is necessary to understand why they behave the way they do.
And so it goes that once I can responsibly stop caring about everything non-creative in the day, I can begin making in the night. The nighttime is the equivalent of freedom for me. Freedom from obligation. Freedom from responsibility. Freedom from the constraints of the rational mind.
On an intuitive level there is a knowing that in order to feel the pull of a paintbrush, my brain needs material to work with. How can that occur in the morning when the day is unripe? The revelations that come with the rolling out of an ordinary day, be that the highs or lows, frenzy or boredom, socialising or solitude, inspiration or dullness, create their own unique momentum. This fills me with emotional material to work with, to use as the fuel to activate a blank canvas. Painting is a transfer of energy. Transforming the invisible emotions of the day by solidifying them into marks on a canvas.
Whilst the early risers love to leap out of bed to catch their proverbial worms, I prefer to do my catching...later. What is left to do is the best thing to do, something to be savored at the end, to be enjoyed fully. A just desert.
What makes the reveling in the dark different to the softness of an early morning is the knowledge that there is an approaching finality to the day. That there is only so much left to actually do. There is a sense of relief in this. The only to-do is to have fun and making paintings for me is, for the most part, about having fun; where being present and trusting myself right to the very core is the aim of the game. The act of creation is one of the most daring and vulnerable modes we can be in. The night time provides the celestial background to let this happen in and at the end of it all there is rest as reward.
I just like the nighttime better.
The way the traffic outside calms down, how the hustle and bustle in the streets subsides, occasionally punctuated by the voices of those spilling out of the local watering holes. I enjoy that the overall visual stimulation is decreased. Even the traffic lights look slicker. There’s less input entering my brain. The knowledge that more and more people are likely to be clambering into bed, feels calming to me. I liken it to the feeling of finally finding oneself walking out of a prolonged period in a crowded space.
After hours also has a subtext of excitement mixed with danger. We are all instinctively more alert when surrounded by the dark. Anything can happen at night, the possibilities venture far and wide. The darkness creates an envelope for all kinds of activities to take place within. The night symbolises escapism, hedonism and that intoxicating feeling of throwing caution to the wind. When I’m painting, it’s in the ultimate IDGAF frame of mind. I am doing what I want, exactly how I want to.
9pm to midnight transforms into a peak creative zone. These hours for me, have a liberating quality, hours that for most of us can be spent guiltlessly sinking into a sofa or a bed. They don’t have expectations of you. They don’t need you to be this or that. Instead they feel gentle, providing a window where relaxation becomes king and where life’s troubles can soften a little, to be dealt with at another time. New connections are made when the tensions held in the mind loosen up. The equivalent of remembering that-thing-you-just-couldn’t-remember at exactly the point you stopped trying to. It is in this mellowing of mood and spirit where creativity can begin to unfold naturally, where the mysterious and unpredictable nature of making paintings or writing words can take place.
Physical energy levels seem irrelevant. There is a creative switch that flicks on which generates a different type of life force, allowing me to overcome the tiredness of the day to paint. In some ways the night time is a rebirth. It’s no coincidence that I write this sentence at 21.24 more invigorated than I was at 09.24. The night shift habit has become ingrained in me to such a degree that even on weekends or during time off I tend to struggle to pick up the paintbrush until much later on. The night time has become my solace. I understand why this is and I welcome it. It is my time to be an artist.
