11 Pieces of Creative Life Advice from My 78-Year-Old Mom

Perfect is boring.

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Hello friends,

I grew up in an abundantly creative household. It was an ideas house. There were no shoulds or musts. A place where you were allowed to be yourself but one that also served as a jumping off point for who you wanted to become.

Walls were lined with books and art, handwoven rag rugs covered the floors. My parents had designed and built the house by hand, so not everything was finished. But “unfinished” isn’t really the right term—it was more of an ongoing work in progress. A living, breathing place that grew and morphed as I did.

This was a lesson I internalized early on: things do not have to be final to be beautiful, creativity is always a work in progress.

In the early 1980s, my mother wrote a book with her sister Marianne, called Väva Kläder, “Weave Clothes.” To add to the creative complexity of the work, they lived on opposite sides of the world: my mom in a house in the woods of the Pacific Northwest and my aunt in Botswana.

Somehow, before personal computers and email, they managed to collaborate on an entire book—drafts of pages written on typewriters were placed in yellow envelopes and mailed across continents and oceans.

In their respective studios, they wove the fabrics and sewed the pieces, then packed them all into suitcases and met up in Sweden to do the photo shoot. By that time my mom was pregnant with me, and only two of the pieces fit, so they roped in their other sister to model.

I loved looking through that book when I was little, obnoxiously telling friends, “my mom wrote a book!” I didn’t know anyone else whose mom had published a book and I was proud. I was also happy to quickly point out that technically I too was in the book—see, there on pg 42!—my mother draped in a stunning green hooded cape, one of the pieces of the clothing she and my aunt had created that could fit her pregnant body. My first ever book experience you could say.

Flipping through it today, the pieces all have a hint of 80s fashion, but they still modern. I want to send the designs to all my friends who sew. My mom has several of the pieces still at home, and wears them on occasion.

In the introduction, my mom and her sister note outline all their goals of the book. They want to inspire people to weave their own clothes, to choose colors that are a little out of the ordinary, but most importantly, they want readers to dare to create on their own.

Which to this day, is all I am ever after.

Handwoven rag rugs hanging out to dry after a wash.

Armed with a Swedish law degree, my mom thought she was on track for a traditional and respectable career. Then she met my American father, and when he suggested that they moved to the woods of the Pacific Northwest she took an entirely different path. That book was only one of many creative endeavors.

For my entire life, I’ve watched the reaction she gets when people hear that she went to law school. This elicits an immediate oooh, ladened with the undertone of how impressive. When she says she’s an artist people don’t really know what to say, and if they do, it’s most often, “oh, do you sell your work?”

She does not sell her work, which isn’t a judgment, simply a fact. After all, why should it matter? When I think of what it means to be an artist, my mom is the first person who comes to mind. And while she never pursued her creative work as a career like I have, I have taken many lessons from her in how she embodies creativity, including that money and prestige are absolutely not what imbue art with value.

After all, creating and making are part of our human heritage. Always a part of how we have existed. Not something to be optimized and to get “good” at, but part of how we spend our time as humans.

Art isn’t a side project in life. Art is life. Or life is art. All of the above really.

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I have always known my mother to do what she wants. She has never been confined by rules or societal expectations, something that could easily lead me to feel embarrassed in my younger years, but now serves as inspiration. She is protective of her creative needs. Art comes first, it’s a priority. Everything else takes a second seat.

But here is the one thing that continually impresses me (ok ok, this does sometimes come with a little bit of envy too): she is the one person I know who doesn’t seem to experience any kind of creative block.

She may be uncertain of where to start sometimes, but it usually has more to do with not knowing what project or medium to pick up than it does from fear of the blank page. And if she’s afraid of the blank page, she has the same strategy I do: turn to the second one.

If she has an idea, she runs with it. There is no questioning about why that particular thing should exist in the world, no pondering if someone wants it, no existential crisis about whether or not creative work matters. She lives and breathes creative energy, and art is always for art’s sake.

A lifetime of flower crowns.

As a child, that kind of abundant, unrestricted energy was freeing, but it could also be intimidating. There was frustration when I had an idea in my head that I couldn’t bring to life in the way that I wanted, and here was my mother on the other side of the table with an abundant creative energy that I had yet to learn how to tap into. Several decades later, and I’m still trying to learn how.

Last week I asked if we could chat about her own creative advice. How does she think about her own process, why does a creative life matter, and why exactly is it that she never seems to be blocked?

We spent an afternoon drinking coffee and talking about all of the above. As a result of that conversation—as well as an entire life spent in her creative orbit watching and learning—today I am bringing you 11 pieces of creative life advice from Britta Brones. One of the most creative people I know.

1. Art is a mindset

To be an artist has nothing to do with a particular medium or craft. It has nothing to do with being paid for your work. To be an artist is to embody artistic energy. Art is a way of being. That means you can infuse creativity into every single thing that you do.

red herrings in progress.

2. Don’t take yourself too seriously

I walked into my mom’s weaving studio a few weeks ago and she was at the black table in the middle of the room moving some red pieces of woven red fabric around.

“What are you making?” I asked. “Red herrings!” she responded. She said this as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. I didn’t bother to ask “why?” because “why?” is never really a question in our household. If you want to make something you make it.

There doesn’t have to be a reason or a purpose or an end goal for your art. When you feel creatively inspired, you follow that feeling and don’t trip yourself up by pausing to ask questions.

3. Creativity is collaborative

Throughout her life, I’ve seen my mother gather different creative friend groups together. In the 90s, she had an “herb group”—women who loved gardening and herbs!—and they even co-wrote a monthly newsletter they would handwrite and photocopy. She has been a member of the local weaver’s guild since the 1970s. But perhaps the most important creative friendship I watched and learned from was between her and a beloved woman named Janet. Like an extra grandmother to me, Janet was several decades older than my mom. But age played no role in their relationship. They would get together, talk about their projects, come up with ideas for new ones. Color, texture, form—it was all imbued into everything that they did.

It was clear to me from an early age that art wasn’t just something that you did alone, it was something to be shared, something that was fueled by letting someone else into your process. Find the people that fill you full of creative energy. Keep them around as long as you can.

The house is full of handwoven blankets.

4. Make your whole house your creative studio

In my parents’ house, there are no clear boundaries between creative space and regular space. Everything is colorful. Even sitting on the couch there is usually a pencil and a pad of paper within reach. A studio does not need to be confined by walls, it can be your everyday existence. Art can be made wherever you currently are, and with whatever you have on hand. Sure, this makes for a slightly messier space, but it’s a fun space. One that feels alive, energizing. A place where ideas are practically begging to come to life. As a friend who came to visit recently put it, “glorious chaos.”

5. Art comes first on the to-do list

You can spend a life trying to get through everyday tasks in order to feel like you’ve finally done all the things you “should” do and now finally you can sit down and make some art. But here’s another option: you could just start now.

There is a great piece by the late artist Susan O’Malley that both my mother and I love, titled “Art before dishes.”¹ As my mother puts it, “do not use Saturdays to clean the house.” There’s your official permission.

6. Have a storage unit of ideas

When I asked my mom why she doesn’t seem to get blocked she said, “well, there’s always another idea to work on.” If she’s feeling stuck in one medium, she’ll move to the next.

She doesn’t have a notebook, or a spreadsheet or some meticulous idea tracking system—the kind of things the internet will tell you that you need in order to stay on top of it all. She also has a wildly good memory, which helps. But even more importantly, she’s curious, always experimenting, never treating anything as truly finished. Art and creativity aren’t crammed into a few minutes in the day, they are woven into all the threads that make up everyday life. Everything comes with creative potential.

7. Find everything interesting

All the mediums! All the supplies! All the books! All the ideas! Be interested in so many things that you would need multiple lifetimes to do it all. You’ll never get to everything, but there’s absolutely never any risk that you’ll ever be bored.

8. Life is uncertain, celebrate often

This is painted on the wall in my parents’ house. I’ve looked at it many times. It’s good general life advice, but it’s really good creative advice too, particularly for long projects where you need regular emotional boosts to get you through. This is how this sounds in my household: “Got a book deal? Let’s celebrate? Finish drafting a chapter? Let’s celebrate! You wrote a really good paragraph that you’re proud of? Let’s celebrate!” etc. etc.

Don’t just wait for the “big” moments. There are a whole lot of things in life that can be cause for celebration. Take the time to honor them.

9. Be moved by the small things

A selection of texts from my mom in a 24-hour period:

• “May morning magic on the garden walkabout: hearing a Western Tanager and spotting two more iris buds.”

• “A chickadee just entered the birdhouse!!!”

• “Another iris bud!”

This goes for most of the creative people that I know: you have to be interested in the world around you, always ready to be captivated by what others might never notice.

10. Perfect is boring

This is a piece of advice passed along from my mom to a good friend of mine. There’s a lot to be said about perfectionism and how much it can hinder us in our creative process. What if we just decided it was boring?

What do you do when you’re bored? You find something more interesting to do. So what if we quickly skipped over the grip of perfectionism and found a better way to spend our time?

11. Let it be fun

I think this is the number one lesson, so I am leaving it here last so that it sticks with you. Don’t get bogged down by the end product. Be enchanted by the process. When you feel stuck, switch to something else for a bit. Learn what you like, and do more of that. Art does not have to feel like a slog. Enjoy yourself. Do what you want.

-Anna

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1. This was featured in the book Advice From My 80-Year-Old Self, which O’Malley wrote based off interviews with 100 different people, aged 7-88.