I am an art worker, which is to say I work with creative mediums as a job; however, that is different than saying I create artwork. I do also like to create artwork, but that is hard to keep up with, especially when you are an art worker. It is well known to those in creative fields of work that creative exhaustion can lead to difficulty when trying to make artwork in your own time. It’s the one caveat to the old saying, “do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.” This isn’t to say that I don’t enjoy my work or that I am in any way unhappy; on the contrary, I very much enjoy my work and am thankful every day that I have the opportunity to do what I do. I just know that the motivation to engage in making artwork is a little harder to come by. The creative spark needs a little extra nudge, is all.
I have worked at PRA for just about 3 years now, and I have been out of college for 5 years. College was the peak of my creative expression, with abundant projects and content that was rich with imaginative concepts and original designs (if not somewhat messy methodologies). Since then, I have gone through up-and-down periods of creative expression, but I have realized that while working as an “art worker,” there are ways to keep your creative spark alive and to continue creating great artwork in your own time.
The first tip I have is to expand your artistic horizons. Working in other mediums can bring you back to an energetic mindset when it comes to creative expression. I mainly work with digital visual arts through graphic design, video, and photography; in recent years, I