Rachael Helmore is an Australian artist and writer, currently living in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. She writes and makes art to connect with herself, with others and with the world around her.
Rapid observational drawing – normally without looking at the page – forms the basis of her art making practice. Her current works explore ideas of culture, home, homelands, landscape and belonging through the use of found images.
Floating around in the art world, you may have heard of the term Artist Date. Maybe more than once. Maybe only about one-hundred-and-thirty-seven times. Stemming from Julia Cameron's seminal book, The Artist’s Way, artist dates are a tried and tested way of connecting...
If you’re part of the Get Messy community, you have almost definitely heard of Steven Pressfield. His book, Do the Work, lays out the nuts and bolts of getting creative work done. I was recently lent the book by a friend and rocketed through it in about two hours…. Yes, it’s only a short book, but yes, it’s also that good. And yes, I would highly recommend that you read it. But in order to pass on some of its wisdom before it’s in your hot little hands, here are 6 important lessons that I learned from Do the Work – and how to apply them to your art-making.
Rachael is my friend in real life. Not only is this episode proof that I have friends, it's also an exploration into what creating art in the "in-between" looks like. Rach is someone who says things that are so profound that I have to whip out my notebook in real life...
Creative funks are never welcome. They have a nasty habit of either sneaking up on us when we least expect it, or rolling in like a slow storm over the horizon, so we can see them coming a mile away. The following symptoms of being in a creative funk may sound...
Type “ripped paper” into Google and you’ll be delivered almost 65 million results, with the first few pages pretty much solely taken up by Pinterest pics and downloadable ripped paper PNGs. Ok, we got it, the world is pretty into it. And so am I: ever since I can...
I’ve been a practising artist for many years now – and I guess I’ve always known, even when I was little, that I was an artist. It was only recently, though, that I was introduced to art journaling by a friend. After a while I decided to give it a go myself, making...
When stuck in a creative rut, buying new art supplies can seem like a reasonable way to go about getting out of it. After all, we all know that art stores (and to a lesser extent, their online equivalent) are magical places; not only full of…uhh, art supplies, but allure and promise and potential. I’m here to tell you to hold your horses. Back up a little. Here’s why stocking up on more art supplies is not the answer.
The life of a creative can be lonely. And let’s face it: whether we identify as creatives or not, we all know what this pretty rubbish state of being feels like. As humans, we’re hard-wired for connection: we long to be understood by others, we long for relationships with people with whom we can go through our struggles and celebrate life’s wins. This blog post presents 7 ways towards feeling less alone as a creative. And the best part is – perhaps counter-intuitively – many of these can be done without interacting with a single other human in real time.