Creative freedom at play

A channel of inspiration.

This is The Snack Desk, a newsletter of personal essays, gems from different corners of the internet, and other bites for your snack break.

One the places I remember feeling the happiest was in an art classroom in sixth grade where the directive was, “Use anything in this room to make whatever you want.” Stacked around the room were boxes and drawers of every artistic material imaginable: paint, fabric, wire, canvas, beads. It was heaven.

I was reminded of that feeling—that there are endless possible creative pursuits worth exploring—while watching the videos of PearFleur on YouTube. On her channel, PearFleur experiments with various art forms, and there’s a freedom in the way she engages with creativity. She rejects the idea that seems to be reinforced for people as they get older: that we have to limit ourselves by staying in one lane until we achieve mastery. Instead, she’s unafraid to post videos of things she’s still learning, or even things she’s doing for the first time, just for the fun of it. Some of her video titles start with the word “trying,” like “Trying Digital Art for the FIRST Time.”

In one of her videos, she makes her own chess set out of clay, and in another she mixes her own paints from vibrant hand-milled pigments. She has a video where she paints scenes from movies, and there’s also one where she makes tiny succulents out of paper. It doesn’t seem like she’s pushing her own creative boundaries for the sake of generating content, but rather that she’s simply following her own interests wherever they might lead.

I’ll be looking to take this creative energy into the weekend. Happy Friday!