The Carolinian Trail

July 21, 2000

First published on the now-defunct website, Themestream, as an essay, "Being a writer and artist."

Nearly every day I spend an hour or two at my drawing board with a collection of artist quality coloured pencils. I paint with them; small pictures I can finish in one or two sittings. Some are completely abstract, others have elements of realism. And they are vibrant; I am a colorist.

Throughout my early life, there was art. It was my favourite subject in school. My father and I took art classes together. I even took university courses when I was considering landscape architecture.

For more than 10 years it stopped. I never picked up a brush or a tube of paint. Then all at once it started again, with the buying of these pencils, and it came back into my life with a rush.

And now I find I must understand where this fits into my life, and how. My creative energy churns out several drawings a week. Some are good enough that I think I could sell them. And now an acquaintance has commissioned a set of three.

The problem is, I'm a writer. In a dozen lifetimes I would never run out of things to write about, I have so many interests. Visual art isn't even my foremost passion; that would be nature and ecology. When I try to describe myself, the best term that comes out is "freelance nature writer," but more and more I feel compelled to add, "and artist."

Drawing and writing are such different processes, and perhaps I need them both. Evening is a great time for writing; in the morning I prefer to draw. Background music is conducive to drawing, but when writing I prefer silence.

With my writing career barely getting back into gear, this art thing looks like a fatal distraction. Do I dare fiddle with my fingers in so many pots when I'm struggling to make a living at one thing? Don't my pen, notebook and keyboard require all the passion I can give them?

In the past few weeks I've been working through a book by Carol Lloyd, Creating a Life Worth Living. It is one of the most practical self-help books I have found for creative people like myself. It isn't just another aid to inspire and get those juices flowing. It actually helps prioritize your goals and plot a career of artistic endeavour.

And in its pages I have found one archetype I can certainly relate to. "The whirling dervish has turned out to be a popular model for many of my students who cannot imagine focusing on less than three full careers at a time," Lloyd writes. "What is important about the whirling dervish is that the three careers are interdependent on one another. They don't pull you in three different directions, they spin you inward!"

Maybe this explains why my hour of drawing every morning seems to energize, rather than detract from, my concentrated research and topical writing after lunch. I can't see how they relate: the process of drawing for me is unstructured and unfettered; my mind drifts far away while I am working.

Perhaps that is the very time when my story ideas are percolating. We all need a mental back burner, a place where words can go to brew.

Yesterday I finished the second drawing of the commissioned trio. It isn't the best drawing I've done in recent weeks, but its colours combine ethereally for a dreamlike effect I had hardly anticipated. I was satisfied. Its completion brought a catharsis.

My hand and eye were done their task. It was time to put my mind to work, and research my next nature article.

Now all I have to do is contemplate the third element in my whirling dervish lifestyle, and perhaps the work I cherish most: getting that novel out of my head and onto paper!