Made by Ben English aged 9
Being creative requires that you are able to do something with your fears. It might be that you can face them, maybe you run head-on into them, maybe you transform them into something funny or cute with your art, or maybe you simply share them in your writing?
Whatever you do with your fear, I think that creativity is both feed by and hampered by fear – depending on how you manage it and what you do with your fear. I feel like my best creative pieces come about when I am often in the worst possible emotional spaces. Often I feel very scared or fearful and putting those emotions into art helps me transform them and also use them productively to fire my artistic skills. But all too often I am frozen by fear – fear of failure, fear of judgement, fear of trying too hard, fear of been seen, fear of not been seen. When fear like this hits me I end up creating nothing except a big hole for myself to wallow in.
So seeing as its Halloween and the time when we get to play and have fun with our fears, why not remember that fear is there for us to master and manipulate for our creative pleasure. Fear should not be allowed to scare us into the shadows. Say “Boo!” to your fears and use those scared feelings to give your artistic creations some edge.
Halloween creation made by Ben English
The burden of wings 