Chloe Perrin is a Welsh writer living in London, having as much fun as her brain will let her. She blogs about her own insanity at bramblebrain.home.blog Tweets tiny stories at @ChloeSquid51 And pens bad comics on Insta @lets_get_triggered She also created a comic for Creativity Corner so check it out below after you've read her piece! What a Creative Life Looks Like for Me When I really think about what living a creative life looks like for me, one word keeps popping into my peripheral, a word that sometimes jars me, sometimes empowers me – puts a hand on my shoulder to stop me then shoves me forward again. The word is responsibility. To me, the idea of being a “responsible artist” holds hands tightly with the idea of taking myself seriously; the more seriously I take my work and my creative life, the more responsibility I feel pressing down on my shoulders. The first comics I drew which I consider my own art were hastily scribbled and posted at three am when I assumed no one would see them and, if they did, no one would really care. The comics were personal and were posted purely to vent; I was incredibly angry at the mental health care system and I wanted to push my experience into the open. Posting comics as an unknown artist was a pretty nice release – if people didn’t like them, eh, whatever, it wouldn’t affect me, I still had a day job that wouldn’t be affected by my opinions and I could keep living creatively at a distance. But then people saw them and, oh my word, enjoyed them. I don’t distance art from the artist. I feel that if someone has put their all into creating something, that something holds a piece of them within it. I didn’t immediately hold myself to the same standard because I just wasn’t taking my creative life too seriously. What’s more, my main medium is short story fiction – an art form so subjective that I couldn’t possibly imagine controlling what people would take from my work. But as soon as people started following, liking and sharing my work I realised that I had to ask myself some deep questions on the subject of responsibility. It’s still difficult to do this, mostly because I’m in no way famous for my work and am almost completely unknown outside my circle. Assuming that my work has the power to influence people feels a bit cocky to me. But then I think, well, am I only going to take responsibility for my successful work? If so, why the hell do I even bother to be creative? These are the questions I now ask myself when I create work which I intend to be seen by any audience, whether that is the general public or a single person. One, am I happy to stake my name to this? Two, if people changed how they acted etc. as a direct result of my work, would I be happy about it? Three, would I be happy for this to re-emerge in the future, and would I still stake my name to it? Would I still take it seriously?
I no longer live carefully, but creatively. Chloe created a comic specifically for this blog and it is just brilliant!
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February 2021
“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Clare Louise RobertsSinger Songwriter, Actress, Poet and all round Creative, passionate about sharing, ideas, collaboration and seeing other people develop their skills and passions. It could be you...Will you be the author of the next blog post?. Click here to find out more! Categories
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