At the foot of the Waterfall Gully to Mt Lofty Summit trail, there is a serene body of water. I recently hiked here with my husband for our four year anniversary, and it is a place I love visiting. It brings me closer to Adelaide’s natural surrounds and, following a strenuous climb, there’s the gratification of reaching the summit overlooking metropolitan Adelaide. I decided to sketch the waterfall in my creative journal for its sentiment and serenity.
I’ve been practising savouring, an emotional management strategy, in the past week. As I sketched, I tried to bring all of my senses into the activity and cast my mind back to the feelings I had during the hike, the freshness of the light rain, the sound of my breath, heartbeat, and feet during the climb, and the invaluable conversations shared.
This image is full of positive emotion regardless of what one may think of my lack of technique with graphite. Mindful creativity, for me, is more about where my head is as I create. I’m less critical in my creative process now than I was at the start of the month and I have great thinkers like Ellen J. Langer, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and my mentor, Sue Langley, to thank for it. More importantly, I’m enjoying the act of creating. Csikszentmihalyi wrote a great book titled Flow which I highly recommend to anyone seeking an improvement to their wellbeing.
Over the past week I’ve been fortunate to have family visit from interstate during a brief easing of travel restrictions. I haven’t been drawing much during that time as I’ve been spending quality time with my mother, cousins, and brother-in-law from Sydney. These fleeting moments are an important reminder for me to cherish my interpersonal relationships and consider how they can feed my creativity. I’ve already used my daughter as my muse for a couple of artworks; now this piece, Waterfalls, is dedicated to my husband and all our blissful walks and conversations together.
Jennifer Trijo 