My creativity advent calendar 2024: Day 17.
Trial, Triumph, and the Art of the Possible Part 2.
Yesterday’s post was about the trials Beethoven faced when he was creating “Ode to Joy”. Today’s is on the same topic but a bit closer to home.
A few years ago I met a wonderful artist, Hilary Murfin, and started following her work. Hilary’s artistic career began in 1989 on completion of a full time (mature student) MA Hons Degree in Textile Design at Loughborough. She began making and painting papier mache vessels, partly as a way to display her interest in Mid Twentieth Century design — especially in women’s fashions. https://hilarymurfin.com/papier-retro/
Over the years Hilary has been faced with situations that could have brought a halt to her creativity, but instead of stopping, she adapted. When mobility issues and arthritic hands restricted what she could do she started experimenting, using oil pastels to make extraordinary drawings of plants in her garden and producing striking and unusual compositions.
https://hilarymurfin.com/work/
As her mobility decreased two activities combined to inspire Hilary to produce a completely different art form. Spending more time in her most comfortable and sunny room she noticed and photographed the ever changing shadow play on walls and furniture and combined these pictures with images from manuscripts she’d discovered in her family archive.
The result is elegantly haunting, ethereal and atmospheric and has brought another phase of creativity to Hilary’s work. https://hilarymurfin.com/ and https://www.instagram.com/hilarymurfin9529/
In this series of articles I’ve talked a lot about the act of creativity that, for some people, is an unquenchable urge and this is another example of talent that faces trial, triumph, and the art of the possible and continues to bring beautiful work into the world for us to enjoy.
