Creativity, Cycles, and Rhythm PART TWO
Creative Cycles Tide Chart + Toolkit.
NOTES FROM MY PHONE
Driving up to Sydney for the National Emerging Art Prize and thinking about what it takes to enter prize after prize each year (the research, fees, applications, cost of shipping and attendance are all aspects that need to be organised, budgeted for and dealt with accordingly).
For years, I believed the secret to creative success was simply discipline - that consistency meant doing the same thing every day, regardless of how I felt. But after two decades of making art, teaching, and observing the rhythms of life, I’ve realised that creativity follows no line or mapped out path. It flows like tides / changing winds/ slow pulses of the body…
At art school I was taught to push, post, apply, and measure myself against an invisible and relentless standard. The problem is not ambition, it’s that linear expectations clash with the cyclical nature of human energy. Inspiration has its own timing, and trying to force it only leads to burnout, guilt, and disconnection.
I’ve been entering art prizes for 17 years and sometimes I’ll have a year of being a finalist multiple times, and other years each application is met with an email that contains the word “unfortunately…”, standing out like a lighthouse amongst a few short sentences about how many artists applied.
Cycles appear in many forms: the lunar month, the seasons, our circadian rhythms, and the phases of the creative process itself. Some days call for expansion and experimentation; others for quiet reflection or careful editing. Honouring these shifts does not slow productivity 0 it shapes it sustainably.
Over time, I started noticing patterns in my own energy: moments of surge, of retreat, of insight. I created small rituals to anchor myself (a candle, a mark on paper, a note on what felt ready to emerge). This practice became the foundation for a rhythm that sustained me rather than drained me.
It is from these observations that I built the Creative Cycles Notion Board, a space to track and honour your energy tides, to notice when to create, when to rest, when to reflect. Even without a tool, simply recognising your own phases allows creativity to stop being elusive and start becoming a companion: steady, reliable, and in tune with the natural cycles that shape our lives.
From somewhere on the Hume Highway, may you flow with your rhythm, honour your cycles and let creativity return to you again and again.
Claire x