creative – The Consulting Artist

March Meet The Maker : Phase One

I recently found out about March Meet The Maker – a month long creative practice diary hosted primarily on Instagram, started by Joanne Hawker. I am enjoying rising to the challenges of the daily creative prompts, and I’ve decided to record these creative snippets in batches here on the blog, so I have a longer term record of them. Are you sitting comfortably?

Day One : Story

‘Just Create’. Beginning my #MarchMeetTheMaker, telling part of my story. This is a piece of art, made and given away four years ago, as part of LeapDay 2016. It symbolises letting go and it encapsulates the creative essence of Leap Day and the free art project I started, shortly after this art was made and hidden. Letting go is a life’s work, and it’s partly why I became an artist. After my Dad died in 2012 I struggled to deal with my grief. In subsequent years I experienced anxiety and depression and worthlessness in ways I didn’t know were possible, even though I’m fortunate to be part of a loving family. Through this time, my art has helped me see things differently, given me some purpose and enabled me to connect with the wider community. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that art helped to save my life, along with Carole, Keira, and some fantastic counselling too. Note: I didn’t make this piece, I wish I could recall who did, as it contains much joy and wisdom for me. Thank you.

Day Two : Hands at Work

Hand drawn hand. Oh come on, it’s been a long day!! ? I work with all kinds of materials- on any other day this photo could show clay, spray paint, watercolour, acrylic – pretty much anything!

Day Three : Time

Today’s #MarchMeetTheMaker is all about time. A good friend recently told me ‘Life is short, live it well’. I wish I’d started arting sooner but hey, I’ll make what I can while I can. In the words of the late great Neil Peart :
‘The arrow flies while you breathe, The hours tick away the cells tick away, The watchmaker has time up his sleeve, The hours tick away, they tick away.

Day Four : Branding

I don’t currently have a logo for my creative work, but my artistic identity is strongly associated with stencil art, spray paint, and frequently features sheet music. When people spot my work I want them to see a contemporary artist working with a mix of new materials and ideas, on older, repurposed surfaces. Something like that anyway. What do you think my ‘brand’ says? I received some very interesting, useful replies to this question on LinkedIn.

Day Five : Close Up

This is work in progress on a carefully crafted guardian – a 00 sized brush drags acrylic paint across rough watercolour paper. Maybe not the best tool for the job but I love the texture on the wing of the finished piece. An exercise in patience.

Day Six : Reducing Waste

Lots of my work is new art on old surfaces. Sheet music, maps, and money all feature in my work, and my Vinyl Junkie project uses old LP records. All these surfaces were unwanted, destined for the bin. Transforming them from junk into new works of art is one small way of reducing waste, which is what today’s #MarchMeetTheMaker is all about.

Day Seven : You

I’m not often in front of the camera, I prefer to let my work do the talking ?. Here I am working on some stencil art at a conference in Berlin. This was part of a three day visual exploration of creativity and innovation with a client. When I’m not doing this, I paint from home, I rent shop space in a lovely pop up shop in Reigate, I run community art workshops, and I make and hide art in my neighbourhood. My free art project will be four years old soon – watch this space and help me celebrate this anniversary.

More to follow…

Somebody That I Used To Know

Ideas reignited through reciprocal joy

Last week I came across half a dozen spare Draw For The Bin cards.

I was about to put them in recycling but thought of a better use for them. I let folks in my network know I had the cards, and offered to doodle on them for anyone who wanted one. Six people quickly accepted the offer, and I began to draw, seeking to make each card relevant to the recipient in some way.

The cards duly went in the post, and I’ve had some lovely feedback from the recipients. We all lived happily ever after. The end. Not quite…

I really enjoyed doing this. It wasn’t particularly time consuming, but the whole thing – asking – drawing – sending, and then getting feedback, was a joyful experience. I used to do this kind of thing quite often. When I visited exhibitions, conferences, other gatherings, I’d frequently buy and make small things I could post to people. Some of these things had a use, and some, like these cards, just felt like the right thing to do.

I can’t recall exactly when I drifted out of this habit, but rekindling it last week has reminded me of the joy it brings. As far as this element of my practice goes, I want to be the somebody that I used to know. Watch this space…

The Art of Getting to Know Each Other Better

A case study about using creative practice to build trust, and explore new ways of working together.

Productive, successful teams recognise the importance of relationships, not just with clients and customers, but with each other too. Redevco is a retail real estate investment management company, and their London team recently hired me to explore a creative way of getting to know each other better.

When doing something differently, the environment we work in is really important. Encouragement beats competition, process beats outcome, and a willingness to give new things a try, is vital. At its heart, art is simply mark making, something we all do all of the time, whether through doodling in the margins during a meeting, or writing the weekly shopping list. To this extent, art can be demystified, and we can agree that we are all artists. The session begins by setting the scene, including a brief introduction to the tools and materials we will use, before starting work.

As time passes, the work grows, overlaps and reshapes. People ask questions, talk about their experiences of creating something new, and keep going. Eventually we arrive at a single co-created piece.

We shift to individual work – abstracting using new materials and tools, hardly a paint brush in sight. We keep focusing on the process and make. The session concludes with people sharing some good conversations, and good work.

Afterwards, the folks at Redevco said:

‘Doug came to our office to run an experimental art session with the aim of trying something new, having fun and getting to know each other better.

We started the session working together to produce a monochrome piece. Although daunted by the large piece of blank paper and hesitant to begin with, we soon got stuck in and it didn’t take long before our independent drawings morphed into a collaborative piece (which we aim to proudly display in the office). It was a really great way to start off the session, it loosened us up and got us working as a team. We then experimented using mixed media to create individual pieces, this enabled us to get really creative and meant we could leave the session with a piece of our own.

Doug was really engaging and passionate throughout, which helped put everyone at ease. It was great to see the transformation in my colleagues from start to finish; although apprehensive about their artistic skills in the beginning, with Doug’s encouragement we all finished the session eager to paint more! It was the hot topic in the office the following day, with everyone discussing their work.

Would definitely recommend and book again, Doug fulfilled our brief and then some….’

My experience as an organisational development consultant and artist gives me a unique perspective on how we can use art and creativity to help us think and do things differently, as individuals, as teams, and beyond. I’d love to help you explore this too.