Surviving the artistic hungry gap

I think that a sunny morning in May sums up just about everything good about living and enjoying the natural world. May in Britain is so beautiful; the white drifts of cow parsley along the hedgerows, plump green leaves on all the trees, lilac in flower and the drifting snow of falling hawthorn petals. Birdsong, blue sky and everything on the cusp of fruiting and blooming. 

In the past and among contemporary pagans, Beltane is the festival that celebrates this moment of ripeness and beauty. Beltane, on the 1st of May, celebrates the gift of life, the lushness of nature in balance. At Beltane, a time of awakening energy and new life, the memory of Winter still looms, like a shadow in the corners. 

Traditionally, the time between March and the end of May was known as ‘the hungry gap.’ This was the time when stores were almost depleted and when there was very little in the garden to harvest. This hungry gap was the moment when the work you had or had not done in the previous year showed itself. If you had worked hard and been blessed with a good harvest, then you might well have enough stores to ride the hungry gap. If you didn’t, then you would be suffering and maybe making promises to yourself to do better this year!

So the May festival of Beltane is a time to celebrate abundance; the riches we have now and the riches (hopefully) yet to come. Most of all, Beltane is about energy, which for artists is also the energy of inspiration.

Artists are asked where they get their inspiration from and the reply should probably be, it comes from work. Because to harvest the abundance of inspiration as an artist, you have to turn up and do the work.

Those times when you are not making good work, not getting sales, not building successful relationships and networks, that funding you didn’t get; those times can be considered to be our artistic winters. The question is, how to hold on during those dark artistic winters, how to build a store that gets you through the hungry gap?

Probably, there are as many strategies for coping with our artistic winters as there are artists experiencing it, however I think there is one strategy that might work for anyone and it is inspired by a famous Zen koan, or teaching story that that says:

"Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water."

In other words, just do your work. Don’t wait for an artistic spring, for Beltane, for things to get good before you start. Try to make work even in the darkest deeps of your artistic winter. Try keeping a daily notebook or sketchbook. Make bad work, make hasty work, make ill-considered work if that is all you can manage, but above all, keep making work.

Every piece of work you make, every thought you note, every sketchbook you fill is food in the stores to protect you against your creative hungry gap. It might be the equivalent of an ancient jar of pickles at the back of the larder, but it’s there and in a pinch, it can help to keep you fed.

So, turn up, do the work, keep going.

Hopefully you will get through the winter, hopefully you will be able to celebrate the abundance of success, whatever that success means to you. And when success does come, remember to celebrate, enjoy the abundance of your successful spring and don’t forget to invite friends to the party. Share the riches, invite others to collaborate, have a blast.

Then, keep on “fetching water, chopping wood.”