Practice makes.......progress

Creative practice has taken a back seat for me in the last year, the new studio has taken my focus away from this ever important part of my business and 2025 is the year I'm bringing it back

I have an issue with the phrase “practice makes perfect”, it feels to me as if by saying it we are already being set up to fail. Because what is perfect? And in what instance would you be able to practice enough at something for it to be ever be done or good enough? I can’t think of any, for we are always learning, always improving, always evolving. So should the phrase rather be “practice makes progress”, because this to me is the truth of it. This is what I try to teach my son’s, to show them that to make improvements, effort needs to be put in and in turn the rewards will usually show themselves.

And I’ve been really conscious this last year that my creative practice has taken a back seat to the “to do” list and the massive project of building a new studio. My work last year was all over the place, having no studio to work in for six months of the year, along with the task of crowdfunding to fund the build, it was all consuming. Then as soon as the studio was finished, I launched straight into my busy season (Autumn through to Winter). And of course I created in this time, wreaths mainly and a few installations but I had no free time to play, desperate as I was to catch up on all the lost hours of earning.

And I find it’s so easy when running a creative business to fall into this trap of only creating for clients or paid work. Of course there is merit and necessity in that, but it often comes at the cost of free play and freedom of choice for the creator. In my early days of this business, I spent 90% of my time creating just for the sake of it. It helped me to form my style, my approach to work and also guided me on what I loved and what I didn’t like so much. Although, if you’re anything like me, often the things we don’t “like” doing are those that don’t come naturally and there’s an argument here to tackle those things head on to find a way to enjoy them.