Hello everyone  I hope that you are well.  The most difficult thing about doing anything creative is waiting for approval from others. So one has to get over this early on if you want to continue to create what you enjoy doing.  Then we have the age old problem of following your instinct and making what you like and enjoy or y  to pander to what you think others might like.. It makes sense to be able to know what a client wants and try to make it so- and then you get paid.  I suppose I am only surmising as I have never worked and got paid as an artist yet.. This has helped me to develop my own interests and style and make me quite happy to do so..
 The advice given to me in my teens when I said I wanted to be an artist was "make sure you have something to fall back on " and I took that advice and do teaching in the Primary schools and really enjoy this and am able to do art as well.  I even find - that I am the traveller/wanderer discussed   by Timo a wonderful artist who does ice sculptures and community art - we watched some great lectures from him recently.
  As I travel around the country to the schools I see the countryside in different times of the year and in changing seasons and different times of the day. This is very interesting and it inspires me.. The backdrop for our world changes every day.
I am very lucky to be working in a school just now in which there are some great teachers who use creativity in their teaching every day and I will be taking some pictures of their classrooms -with their permission- just to show that creativity can be used well in the classroom. It's the wonderful displays they do which really change the environment of the school like a changing landscape and this keeps the pupils focussed and motivated to learn.

As we go home at night or as we travel early in the morning we see wonderful sights which I would normally miss and so I do feel blessed to be like a wanderer in this wonderful land we inhabit. My hope is that I can keep on developing my technical skills to enable me to reflect what interests me. I think one has to be quite headstrong to be an artist and maybe this skill is one which can be transferred into other areas of life. !!

This image is based on the wonderful lights and colours we see in windows at Christmas time.