This summer, I experienced a creative drought.
Not the kind where I was busy or distracted or simply needed a little time away from the studio. I mean months went by without having a clear idea for a painting. I would look at my sketchbook and nothing would come. I could feel the absence of something that is usually so alive inside of me, and eventually that creative drought became something deeper. I stepped across the threshold into depression.
Depression has been an ebb and flow throughout my life, although it had been years since it had truly shown its face. Like all unwanted visitors, he arrived when I didn't expect him and always when I didn't want him. And yet, here I am. Working my way through the drought, doing what needs to be done to rework the soil so that it can once again grow things.
I've been thinking a lot about the difference between creative incubation and creative drought. They can look similar from the outside because both involve periods of not making, but they feel completely different from the inside. Creative incubation is the time after something has been created when rest and renewal need to happen before the next creative season begins. You might not know exactly what is coming, but there is a sense that something is forming beneath the surface. Creative drought is different. It feels like a wasteland where nothing is growing and you aren't sure when, or if, anything ever will again.
This summer was drought.
And the only way I know to work through a drought is to rework the soil.
Water at the Root of Creativity
I've been thinking a lot about water lately, and maybe that's because when you are dry to the bone, you start to notice how badly you need it.
Water is at the root of creativity. It is the element associated with the sacral chakra, the center of creation, pleasure, emotion, and movement. It is present at the beginning of life in the fluids that surround and nourish a baby before birth. Water flows and moves and allows ideas to circulate. Water cleanses and restores. Water baptizes. Water shapes.
A river can carve through stone. Waves reshape the shoreline. Tears come when words can't.
So when we find ourselves completely dried out, it's no wonder creativity isn't coming. There is nowhere for it to flow. No movement, no circulation. The ideas become stuck.
I think this is part of what happens during creative burnout and creative block. We often try to solve the problem by adding more. More inspiration. More productivity. More pressure. More books, more podcasts, more scrolling, more things to consume. But sometimes what is needed isn't more information. It's water.
For me, that water has looked like isolation, time in nature, sitting beside a lake and watching birds move and call to one another, letting myself cry, letting myself not know what comes next. There have been days when the most creative thing I've done is sit outside and watch the world continue without asking anything of me.
This is the work of the underworld.
It isn't particularly glamorous, and it certainly isn't productive in the way our culture likes to measure productivity. But something happens there. The tears begin to water the ground. Time alone gives the roots somewhere to grow. Nature begins to compost what is no longer useful.
And slowly, the soil changes.
BRING HOME THE KEEPER OF THE LIGHT
The Three Gold Hairs
I've been working with the folktale The Three Gold Hairs, as told by Clarissa Pinkola Estés in Women Who Run With the Wolves, in my painting workshops. The original story is about a dried-out, dying old man who is carried into warmth and nursed back to life, eventually revealing himself as the sun.
I began telling the story differently because the image of an exhausted, dried-out old body felt deeply feminine to me. I wanted to imagine what it would look like if we gave this experience to an old woman instead, and what might happen if she were met not with more demands, but with care.
In my version, an ancient woman is making her way through a dark forest. She is almost completely depleted. Her joints hurt, her body is heavy, and the tiny lantern she carries is burning lower and lower. She can barely move, but she sees a small light in the distance: a lighthouse, a place where she might finally rest.
She makes it to the door just as her lantern goes out.
Inside, an old Crone is sitting beside a roaring fire. She gathers the exhausted woman into her arms, carries her to the warmth, and rocks her through the night.
"There, there. There, there. There, there."
And she keeps rocking.
As morning approaches, the old woman becomes younger. Then younger still. Until she is a tiny child with golden hair. Just before sunrise, the Crone plucks three golden hairs from her head and throws them into the fire. They hiss and shrivel away.
The little girl climbs down from the Crone's lap, runs to the door, looks back with gratitude, and flies into the sky to become the morning sun.
I love this story because the woman doesn't find her way back to herself by trying harder.
She is restored by being held.
Sometimes the Answer to Creative Block Is Rest
This is probably the hardest part for me to remember.
When I am not creating, I want to fix it. I want to understand why. I want to find the book or the practice or the prompt that will unlock the thing inside me. I want to get back to work.
But the woman in this story doesn't need another assignment.
She needs to be rocked.
There is a time in creativity when doing nothing is actually doing something. Holding an idea without forcing it into existence. Taking a walk. Journaling. Making art that no one will ever see. Sitting in meditation. Going outside. Letting yourself be bored. Being near water. Sleeping. Crying. Paying attention to what your body is asking for instead of what your calendar is demanding.
This is creative incubation at its best. We give the idea somewhere to live before asking it to become something.
And when the drought has gone on long enough, there may be another layer to the work: removing what is keeping the water from flowing.
That's where the three golden hairs come in.
As artists, we spend a lot of time learning how to add. We learn color theory and composition and technique. We collect references and ideas and supplies. We fill our sketchbooks.
But good art also requires removal.
Sometimes we have to take something away to reveal what was underneath.
The same is true of our creative lives.
The first thing I think we need to throw into the fire is our attachment to how we think something should look. Perfectionism can keep us from making anything at all because we are comparing the thing in front of us to the thing we imagined it would be.
The second is our fear of being seen. It is easy to keep creating privately, waiting until we are better or more confident or have something impressive enough to share. But eventually the work has to leave us.
And the third is the belief that we aren't worthy of a creative life in the first place.
That one can be sneaky.
Maybe you learned that art was something you did when your "real" work was finished. Maybe you were praised for being practical, responsible, productive, successful. Maybe somewhere along the way you learned that spending an afternoon painting just because you wanted to was selfish.
There are so many things we have learned from society about who we are supposed to be that don't actually align with who we are underneath all of it.
Some of those things need to go into the fire.
This is what I mean by removing what no longer serves us. Not abandoning everything we've learned, but getting curious about which beliefs actually belong to us and which ones we've been carrying simply because someone handed them to us.
Sometimes reconnecting with creativity is less about finding the right thing and more about removing the thing that is in the way.
The Lighthouse As Refuge
This is the story I see in The Keeper of the Light, a painting from my This Land is OUR Land collection.
I've always loved lighthouses, although I only recently had the chance to see one in person. There is something about that lone building sitting at the threshold that gets me every time. It stands at the edge of worlds, where land meets water, using its guiding light to move people through the dark and allow them safe passage.
It is the tiny light the old woman sees in the distance when she has almost nothing left. It is the place she has been trying to reach through the darkness, grasping one tree and then another, using the very last of her strength to move toward warmth.
The lighthouse is home.
It is the roaring fire waiting inside. It is the Crone who gathers her into her arms and says, "There, there," while she rocks her back to life. It is the place where she doesn't have to perform or produce or prove anything. She can simply arrive exhausted and be cared for.
I've always loved the symbolism of a lighthouse, but seeing one in person made something click for me. A lighthouse doesn't chase the ships. It doesn't go out looking for the people who need it. It simply stands there, keeping its light, offering a point of orientation in the darkness.
It says: you can come this way. There is somewhere safe to land.
That feels particularly meaningful to me while I'm working my way through this creative drought. I've spent so much of my life thinking I need to find the light, find the answer, find the next idea. But maybe the light isn't something I need to manufacture.
Maybe I need to find my way back to the place where it has been burning all along.
The lighthouse is that place.
It is the lighthouse at the edge of the forest. It is the warmth after the cold. It is the place where we can stop moving long enough for something inside of us to begin moving again.
And perhaps that is what reconnecting with creativity actually looks like sometimes. Not finding a new idea, but finding our way home.
Finding Your Way Back to Creativity
I don't have a neat ending to this story because I'm still in it–Just like this painting After the Drought.
I'm still figuring out what grows after a drought. I'm still learning how to tell the difference between needing to rest and needing to move. I'm still figuring out which beliefs need to be thrown into the fire and which parts of myself need to be protected and nourished.
But I do know that creativity comes back.
I've watched it happen before.
And I believe it is happening again.
Maybe your creative block isn't a sign that you've lost your creativity. Maybe it is a season asking something different of you. Maybe you are in incubation. Maybe you are exhausted. Maybe the soil needs to be turned over. Maybe you need to get near some water and let yourself be quiet long enough to remember what it feels like to be alive.
We are not machines that produce ideas on demand. We are living things. We move through seasons. We dry out. We bloom. We lose leaves. We grow again.
And sometimes, before we can create something new, we have to make our way back to the lighthouse
Back to the fire.
Back to the place that can hold us when we have nothing left to give.
The lighthouse is still there, shining through the dark.
Not asking us to hurry.
Just showing us the way home.