How To Avoid A Creative Crash

Block busters The stresses of a creative life can weigh artists down and choke their productivity. Dom Carter learns how you can get out of a rut.

Today’s artists have to wrestle with creative satisfaction, a sense of industry identity and motivation – all within and around a hectic schedule. It’s no wonder that these conflicting interests can lead to a creative crash, where people buckle under the weight of their internal and professional expectations.

To keep his mind active and his work fresh, illustrator Randy Gallegos has diversified his creative output along five genres, including a week-long series of daily still-life paintings. These genres allow for different types of experiments that also feed into other bodies of work.

“There are two kinds of experiments you can involve yourself in,” Randy explains. “Private ones, which allow you the greatest creative freedom as well as the greatest freedom to fail and learn; and public ones that you’ll show to the world.”

FIND THE FUN FACTOR

Making time for these sorts of experiments is difficult. But for Randy, trading leisure time for non-commercial work is a wise investment because he now has five revenue streams. “I never lack for work,” he says, and the benefits don’t end there.

“When I did purely illustration, if I had a gap in my schedule I’d be in a panic reaching out to clients trying to fill it, and this could also tempt one into taking low-paying work just to feel employed. Instead, now if I have gaps, I have a large stack of other work I can be doing and I’m excited to get to it.”