Samantha Humphreys

Art, Photography, Inspiration & Education

Tag: art

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 14, 2024

Foraging

I love that word, Foraging, it feels wholesome and healthy somehow. I have been a manic forager of late as there is an abundance of blackberries near us. I used to go blackberry picking with my grandma, or ‘Mangar’ as we called her, due to the fact that I couldn’t say the word grandma properly when I was little-so it stuck!

We used to have long walks, along Mersey Rd, along Otterspool Prom and other roads that I didn’t know the name of, we always seemed to walk for miles and there was always blackberries somewhere along the route.

Now the funny thing is, I didn’t like them then, which is what brings me to writing this post. I liked the jam that followed the foraging, I liked the routine that happened in the school holidays, I like the memory of Mangar reminding us often that we mustn’t pick the low down blackberries because the Pooka spoils those ones, she was deeply Roman Catholic, Irish and the belief was that the Pooka was the devils horse. This was a far more exciting way of discouraging us from picking the ones near where dogs may go to the toilet I think.

While on a walk last week, there was a small boy with his family, his cheeks stuffed with the fruit and juice running down his chin, his grown up was telling him that she thinks he has had enough now as he has dinner at home. It was lovely to see.

Leave a comment
August 5, 2024

Summer Holidays

3ADCA89C-1A8A-4A93-AFED-B8721671CAF9

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
June 12, 2024

Finding my way

I struggled to title this post, each title I gave it, I deleted immediately as it was a bad cliche and I winced while reading it back. In a nutshell, and I feel a little emotional while writing this, I have spent some years since completing my Masters in Art & Design and Post Grad Cert in Higher Ed Practice developing my love for teaching art. I have had the pleasure of nurturing learning journeys of students from young to not so young, but who are still as inspired and passionate about learning creativity as each other. 
At the heart of everything I do runs a thread of environmental concerns and an interest in how being actively creative can strengthen mental health and general wellbeing. 

As I have moved away from teaching in formal education but still find joy in thinking of ideas and planning for learning, (which I know some people find strange, that I enjoy planning lessons, I enjoy marking too but thats another story) I have spent some time collating the many lessons and workshops I have taught in various settings and built a portfolio of workshops, lessons and activities which I will sell to art teachers, tutors and lecturers on my new relaunched Etsy Shop, Studio Sam Humphreys . This, along with my private teaching and tuition is how I have found and will complete my new teaching pathway. Exciting times.

Leave a comment
April 24, 2024

Wild garlic

IMG_3600 IMG_3640

The other day I was walking through a forest and the wild garlic was out in full bloom, the smell was divine! Each year I have the same thoughts, can I pick this? Can I cook with it? I must find out when I get home, then I forget all about it. I documented it in my journal so I wouldn’t forget, about it which means that I have looked up the answers to my questions and plan on cooking something delicious next week, garlic bread perhaps, nothing too ambitious! 

Leave a comment
April 23, 2024

Turquoise with Threads of Black

IMG_3670

Turquoise with Threads of Black (2024) #366 series no.113

I have been keeping a creative journal since last summer, I have only really made the effort to keep it up since the start of this year. The process of journalling along with my 366 project are pushing my brain to reflect as a matter of course and recognise things about what I am thinking and feeling in a way I never have before. I have various themes running through my journal which is largely driven by my daily walks that I take for wellbeing, circles, colour theories (my own as well as established), trees, artist tools and zentangles….and I will probably think of more as I continue on through the rest of the book.

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”

IMG_0168

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.

IMG_0174

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
July 17, 2022

Art Journaling

Page in Progress (2022)

I have started an art journal so I can keep in one place all the art I am making in the name of looking after my own physical and mental wellbeing. I walk a lot and I don’t know about you but my phone is full of photographs of interesting things I noticed my walks such as a bindweed that I didn’t know could be pink and white striped, or a dandelion that looks different to yesterday’s dandelion that you also took a picture of. I have also been making art while preparing for and teaching art for wellbeing and have botanical drawings and Zentangle inspired pieces. As I have produced these works, I have placed them in my sketchbook along with flowers that are pressing nicely in the back pages. By keeping the pieces together in a sketchbook, naturally, a journal develops.

My art journal will contain art, not backgrounds for art (even though the art may be used as a background), preparation for art, not writings about art, not evaluations or process records or photographs of art…just my art.

oh, and it will never be considered finished, always a work in progress.

Leave a comment