Life | Samantha Humphreys

Documenting Our Path

Remains of the Day (2025) Mixed Media

So this past week has seemed like I have been throwing loads of balls in the air and seeing whether any land on my head! Sometimes they all landed on my head at once .

This past week in Journaling I have been teaching Gelli Printing as a technique for capturing and documenting a moment. There were some fantastic results, there was also some beautiful debris at the end of the lessons. The technique serves as a reminder that often, the things that we do, result in a bi-product that is sometimes more pleasing and satisfying than our original intention.

Journaling is proving to be a minefield of memories, both for myself as well as my students and clients. Because we talk during the lesson and share experiences (not a requirement to participate, we can just listen to our peers), memories conjure up forgotten similar experiences for us all. I know its a cliche, but talking is precious, we talk, we share and we listen-then we document these memories in any way we like because these precious moments are too much of a treasure to risk forgetting.

Leave a comment

January 20, 2025

Waiting For the Bus

I was waiting for a bus at Braintree bus station into Chelmsford on Saturday and there were a huge number of pigeons around, no reason, there was no litter or dropped food on the ground so I can only surmise that they are sociable little beings and they like to be around us humans.

I have decided that I need to notice more birds, I will make it a focus of my photography during my walks this year. I’m sure I only see pigeons or robins and I used to see so many more. I remember doing a ‘topic’ as it was called in primary school on birds, learning about the thrushes and what their eggs were like, the excitement of finding pale blue speckled eggshells on the ground under trees. I loved drawing the birds so much so I want to re-capture that joy.

So I started with the pigeons.

Leave a comment

January 18, 2025

Peace and Rose Gold Sky

How beautiful is this? I am so lucky that I have this on my doorstep, for now anyway. It wont be long before this walk will be alongside houses and back garden fences and maybe not such a clear view of the lilac rose gold sunrise and hazy late morning views across the fields.

I heard some lovely words the other day during a journaling for wellness class, “Whatever happens, Don’t die before you’re dead, stay alive…” After some googling, it seems as though this is a part quote from Virginia Woolf. Whether it is or not and I couldn’t find a legitimate source, it packs a punch.

Particularly as later in the day I was asked what job I wish I could have done. My answer was, without a doubt, the job i’m doing now, but I wish I had done it sooner. This of course was not taking into account that I took the route I did through life for a reason, I wouldn’t swap what I have for the world. If I had made different career choices in early adulthood I may not have the family I have now so it was only a ‘without taking all things into consideration’ answer. I also may not have been as engaged and switched on to the importance of creativity in fostering a healthy sense of wellbeing when I was younger. It was something I considered a hobby that I was good at.

Now, I like to think that every choice I have made in life has yielded a success, whether that be a small win amongst what may have seemed like a failure or a huge turning point.

Leave a comment

January 5, 2025

So here it is…2025

Well, that happened fast! A year ago I was sat here making promises to myself that I would scoop myself up from the depths to which I had plummeted to and climb to a reasonable level of better mental health.

Walking in the woods this morning through the dip that has been carved out over time, I was hit by the thought that as I was eye level with tree roots, I must be what once was underground. It was a good grounding (no pun intended) realisation that we need to sculpt our own pathways in life. Some sections of the path is easier for some than it is for others, people face obstacles differently with no two battles won in the same way. There are roots to trip us up along the way if we aren’t careful and either side of us, the strength of the trees and overhanging branches that provide protection and shelter, can also overwhelm; reminding us that we are just a small piece of the artwork and if we don’t look after ourselves; we can easily be beaten.

However, I feel optimistic as I walk through here each morning. The subterranean dip feels safe, the tree roots protect the sides from caving in and although they may cause us to trip from time to time, they also support underfoot. Should I wish to stop moving forward for a time, the tree roots help me out by providing steps out. They also make it easy to step back in when I’m ready.

Steps (2024)

So to summarise as I realise I’m waffling a bit, I can’t help ‘metaphoring’ but I’m a great advocate for how taking time to walk through these kind of spaces provides such clarity to an otherwise smoggy brain; I am in a much better place than I was a year ago. I have developed strategies to take control of my pathway and just being able to ‘be in control again’ laid a strong foundation for me to succeed. It has by no means been easy, I have worked really hard over the past year. As a result, working from my own experiences (sometimes it is advantageous being older) I have been able to develop my practice in therapeutic art and have written and led courses in Art and Wellbeing and bespoke creative workshops.

I love what I do.

Leave a comment

December 6, 2024

Finding My Groove

As I expected, life changed somewhat this year, I left formal education after thinking I would remain involved forever in a job I loved. I fixed some….no, most, of the necessary broken bits of my rapidly and scarily declining mental health and started to find time for dealing with what needs dealing with physically. I developed much of my art practice with new techniques throughout the year. This was mainly because of Project 366 which has forced me to allow daily time for my art and as a result, I feel as though I have practiced ‘extreme art’. The additional skills, as well as being awfully useful as I can now teach more techniques than ever, have released all manner of wonderful chemicals to my brain perfectly complementing those endorphins I get from taking long walks each day.

Additionally this year, I have learned a lot about myself and found ‘where I actually belong’ in the world. As well as being a daughter, a wife and a mum, I feel that maybe life has been like a vinyl record rather than a treadmill and I have finally found my groove. You may well laugh at my cheesy metaphor, (I did) but we tend to see life as a series of milestones, we are conditioned that way. Maybe it’s meant to be a round of possibilities that show themselves at different stages of our life and while we shouldn’t constantly flit from one thing to another : we can settle into something more than once, and we don’t have to be in just one groove forever.

Teaching how creativity can give us the tools we need to maintain a healthy wellbeing is my groove. Journaling has been crucial to developing my own sense of healthy wellbeing is something we take for granted, yet It is in fact a provision we must make for ourselves and it needs checking daily. As an Artist, I take it for granted that creativity is good for the soul, but not everyone sees themselves as creative so how do we encourage exploration of that? Everyone possesses creativity, maybe not in an obvious way, but we all have the ability to mark make, make creative noise or move creatively and we should allow ourselves to do this as much as we give ourselves the time to eat, work and sleep.

Leave a comment

August 20, 2024

August

Serious post warning!

It’s results season in the UK, Level 3 last week, Level 2 this week. Seeing on social media friends children receiving results and the news coverage this occurrence attracts each year reminded me of how strange the exam system really is, it puts me in mind of a cartoon drawing I have seen many times, I can’t find the artist, the quote that accompanies it has been wrongly attributed to Einstein so I can’t cite any reliable sources other than *one of the many other online articles in which it is included.

Funny cartoon this, sad though, because then you realise that actually, this really isn’t a fair way to assess us complex human beings, taking an exam for two hours or so to test us on two years worth of learning simply tests memory, not learning. Don’t get me wrong, those that do well in exams may well have learned and understood the content well, but the system isn’t testing that and its outdated now.

A healthier way of ‘testing’ if we must, is surely the more holistic approach of coursework. Assessment still takes place but students will learn how to encounter problems in a positive way and also learn that there may be different approaches to achieving a solution and there may be more than one solution to find.

Because we learn more from our ‘failures’ than we do from not being allowed to fail, mistakes could become instead, ‘developments’ because, thats what they are; Just for one moment, forget the exam system, our life is nothing more than a series of developments, moving from one stage of life to another. I say ‘another’ not ‘the next’ because that again implies that there is only one expected outcome for everyone. There is not. One of the guarantees in life is that what happens next in my story, will not be the same as what happens in yours.

We should be encouraging our young people to understand that it is more important that they believe that if they try their best, have trust in the professionals to help them reach where they decide they want to be, whenever that may be. The story will be all the better for it.

*Graphic by Fani Hsieh taken from https://thecord.ca/standardized-testing-flaws/

Leave a comment

August 5, 2024

Summer Holidays

The summer holidays have always been a time for me to get the house straight, arrange any medical appointments that weren’t urgent in term time and plan lessons for September. For the first time in years I have total control over when I take my holidays and within reason, spend it how I like. I ‘broke up’ on Saturday afternoon after the last Art for Wellbeing session of the short course at ARU Writtle. I very much enjoyed writing and teaching this and I look forward to the next time. I also met this beautiful little snail who was just chilling on the globe thistle, as were what seems hundreds of other snails. I noticed for the first time, the different patterns on the shell.

This year I have decided I will be enjoying organising my home studio and learning (or strengthening) some practical skills. There is always a different way of applying a skill and many different ways of teaching them. I am also looking forward to my new clients who are looking for some creative life coaching, this is not new to me as I have been teaching creative wellbeing techniques for years but not as a certified life coach.

Of course it wouldn’t be summer in my little corner of the world, without someone setting fire to the field behind our road. As the houses that it backs onto have wooden fences and the fire spreads wildly and rapidly, I imagine it’s quite frightening for those households. On my morning walks there is still pungent evidence of the event and a stark reminder of the overwhelming power of nature.

Leave a comment

July 21, 2024

The story of how I wrote a really long post and it didn’t save……

Frustratingly, I spent the best part of an hour composing a post about my Art for Wellbeing class yesterday, the plant I chose to draw and study and how it led me to make comparisons to how we develop as humans. I decided that, fate must have decided that it was too long winded and I need to get to the point a whole lot faster because life is too short for unnecessary words!

So you know when you want to ask an older child what their future intentions are, it’s a little awkward asking the patronising question ‘what do you want to be when you grow up?’ . What else could we say without it sounding too formal, final and, for want of a better word, ‘triggering’? But why do we put pressure on humans to ‘grow up’ anyway? The idea of growing up or being grown up has a finality about it that kind of implies that you fully understand how you should approach adulthood and done with learning because you know everything. Can you see how ridiculous that is when written down?

My chosen plant, known as a Drooping Prickly Pear, has so many visible life experiences which was how I came to follow this train of thought. It has both weathered areas, yet is still sprouting new blooms and pads. As people, we are placed under so much pressure to make decisions, as though there is no time after their years of school to decide based on their current circumstances and abilities. Also, we do not learn and grow at the same rate as our peers, or in the same areas of life. Maybe we should instead be asking children at age 14, ‘what do you want to learn next’ (notice I say learn, not achieve). Then the same question can be asked year after year until, as confident young adults they can be asking themselves. The magnificent Drooping Prickly Pear will continue to develop and grow throughout its 20 years or so of life as will its companions in the glasshouse, but they will not reach full development ever-because, there is no such thing as completely developed in living things.

That was considerably shorter and better!

Leave a comment

January 19, 2024

366

I don’t make new year’s resolutions as I don’t really believe they work. However, I have neglected my art practice over the past year, so January the first seemed a good time to remedy this. In this year, a leap year, I will be creating a postcard for each day.

2024 will also be a year of change for me, as was last year, but this year I aim to be more in control of the changes and they will be positive changes. I will be taking more care of my health and wellbeing which has been somewhat erratic in the latter part of 2023. The 366 project will serve as a form of documentation of the year to come.

Leave a comment

June 10, 2023

Miles, Minutes & Steps

Creativity takes courage. ”Henri Matisse”

I have started a new job this week, I am going to be learning how to translate what I have learned as a University College lecturer into what is required of me to teach in a school. It is a lot to learn, I will have to think quicker and ‘do’ faster and If that isnt scary enough, I was used to a wellbeing routine, early morning walks full of rich green-ness and tranquility that started my day off whatever lay ahead. That has all turned a little chaotic and I need to find a way to develop a new routine, I need that walk infused into the start of the day. I already wake at the crack of dawn and I find that while I’m thinking all this, inside my head is like a roladex that flips round and round and I can’t quite grasp the visual and exciting ideas that whizz past at too fast a pace….Breathe…

…Today, I decided that what I must do, while my routine develops organically, I will take every chance i get to ‘bank’ wellbeing miles, minutes, steps-whatever I can to keep my mind healthy. So today I banked some, stopping (inside, I was annoyed that I kept on doing this) to take photos of the familiar route I have been craving all week, which had a newness to it, as though its a metaphor for the new eyes nature of my new role.

The Wood Melick brushes that delicately protrude from the side of my path and then once onto the newly mown and difficult to walk on fieds, the purple Orchard Grass catches my eye in the thick patches of wild that have been left.

Then there are my favourite trees, well, some of my favourite trees, I have several…I’ll stop now.

Leave a comment

Category: Life

Creativity takes courage. ”Henri Matisse”