You have touched upon your work being emotioanlly driven. How did you overcome emotional downers, obstacles that you were faced with or criticisms.
During the month of Ramadan I got really ill and I had like 2 hours of energy each day and it was either read the Quran or create this visual content. It was really hard for me spiritually and creatively because I love my art but I had other goals that I needed to accomplish while I was accomplishing this 365 day challenge. So I still continued creating but it wasn’t to the extent of things that I wanted to because I didn’t have any energy to do it.
There were points throughout the year where I had creative lows and it wasn’t really creative lows, it was that I was overly stressed from other aspects of my life. With my art it’s something that always brings me back to centre. A lot of times it was just about getting started. It took me moving to Somalia to start creating again, I had been on a 10-year hiatus, I wasn’t creating anything. It was just about getting started, putting my paintbrush on the canvas, it was simply that. On those days where I wasn’t sure about what I was going to create, those were some of my greatest creations.
I did have some family members who were not supportive of what I was doing and one was living at home with me. I had this set time where I would create and everytime I was creating they would tell me ‘you’re wasting your time, you could do other things that are more conduceive to your time’. So I was just constantly dealing with that and I just have to remind myself that I am doing this for me and not anyone else so it doesn’t really matter what anyone thinks about what I am doing with my time.
It’s really important that you’re self-assured and grounded in who you are because a lot of people would get dissuaded by that and repress what they really want to do because people are criticising them or telling them what to do.
And that’s when you know you’re on the right path when someone is completely against what you’re doing. So you need to continue moving forward. If anything it’s more motivation but if you’re constantly being exposed to that toxicity it really can affect your mental space so I’ve learnt to not create in those spaces. Adjusting my environment into healthy one and that’s my rule.
Tell me what you think…