Hello Creative QB’s,

3 minute read

I always feel after a road trip inspired by all I have seen and collected and imprint those images somewhere deep in my right brain. I capture the changing light on modern day ‘film’ and stuff the car full of nature’s curios I have found along the way.

Driving Creativity! I mean in a literal sense. To physically drive to create!

Fortunately I love to drive, and I do a lot of it. Backwards and forwards down the same potholed road daily. Work, children, family, sport, dinner …. always driving.

Living an hour from anywhere driving gives me time to quiet my restless mind. It gives me time to process the day, clear out the negative energy and leave it all behind. Needless to say often with the flick of a hand gesture in reference to “eating my dust”!

Sometimes it makes me sad, sometimes it makes me sing, but most of the time it gives me permission to think. Sifting through the clutter I accumulate I often stumble on some new hair brained idea that I think just might be genius. Until, after a little research I discover it’s all been done before. But that’s OK…because I am thinking!

But…my most favourite driving of all is the good old-fashioned road trip! A road trip is getting to sit in a different kind of drivers seat.

The joy of being free for just a short time. Free of the menial daily tasks that block our creative right brains. Suddenly the left logic gets compartmentalised in the boot with the luggage and the spare tyre, a fitting place and only retrievable in case of emergency.

I always look forward to the cool air on my face whilst packing and re-packing the car in the still quiet of night. The anticipation of ‘possibility’ as dawn shakes sleepy heads awake. And, finally as the journey begins the stops and starts that become less frequent as the streetlights fall behind, the road narrows and suddenly my eyes become open.

Colours become more vibrant. A red letterbox says hello, a golden tree flames against a blackened sky and an old derelict building becomes purposeful again. Eyes capture frames as if looking through a lens. Landscapes undulate and curve with balance and harmony and dust encapsulates hidden hues from times long ago.

The straight lines of the road carry us onwards and the boundaries of the horizon are limitless. Just the simple image of a fence running along a of a vast expanse may subconsciously spark an idea of converging lines to be used later when time permits.

I always feel after a road trip inspired by all I have seen and collected and imprint those images somewhere deep in my right brain. I capture the changing light on modern day ‘film’ and stuff the car full of nature’s curios I have found along the way. A practice proudly inherited from my mother and now sometimes frustratingly handed down to my own children. Some collect dust in a hidden corner of the office, or some are proudly displayed on a wall or shelf, becoming the inspiration for the next big project.

You may have a destination or purpose for your journey on the open road. But similarly to the creative journey there is a task involved along the way. Gears need to be changed and fuel needs to be pumped, as does the creative process. Ideas need to be nourished and concepts need to be transformed. The blackboard pavement of the road metaphorically gives the time and space to do just that!

As always, I come home enthused and busting to put pencil to paper. Called to action by the gift of the open road.

The creative journey never ends on returning home, it only just begins.

BELLE xo