Ten years ago, I was an exhibitions and events manager for an arts venue in Edinburgh. It wasn’t well paid but I truly believed in the ethos - supporting artists and musicians to get established. I was bringing in bigger names and creating a sense of community when the financial crash happened and, at the same time, the Scottish government diverted all arts funding to the Commonwealth Games. The venue closed and I was made redundant. I was unemployed for eight months, during which time I applied for many jobs, but I’d always had this undefinable frustration at having no real creative outlet myself.
Then a friend o.ered me a place on a course she was running based on The Artist’s Way (Pan Macmillan, £16.99) by Julia Cameron. I felt like a fraud - I wasn’t an artist, I didn’t even know what I wanted to do but, because I was unemployed, I had the time to explore it properly and began to realise that this frustration I’d been feeling was that of the ‘shadow artist’. I’d been in a job helping other artists but I’d never had the confidence to explore my own creativity. I was living vicariously through others, not feeling worthy of being an artist myself and fearful of failure if I tried.