Running out of Creative Steam

I studied physics at school, but one of the concepts that I never fully grasped was entropy, the general trend of everything in the universe from order to disorder. While I did not understand the science behind it, my mother would attest that my room was a living experiment of this phenomenon. A few years back, I watched a documentary by the physicist Dr Jim" Al-Khalili titled Order and Disorder. In it, Al-Khalili explained entropy and its importance in our world in a way that switched on a light bulb for me.

He explained entropy in the steam engine and how it allows for energy transfer and heat conversion to enable mechanical work.
Water in a state of order is heated, creating steam, which is water in a state of disorder. The same principle applies to a petrol engine. Fuel in a state of order is heated to create gases in a state of disorder. In both cases, energy is converted from heat to mechanical work.

Over the past couple hundred years since the invention of the steam engine, we have used this energy transfer to make and create stuff, then used a lot of that energy to put things back into order. From mowing the grass to trimming hedges, stacking products on supermarket shelves, and parking cars, we allocate a large proportion of this process of entropy to putting things back into order.

My experience of this immutable law of the universe is no more evident than in my painting studio.
I start the creative process by keeping the studio neat and tidy. I clean all the brushes in a jar, line up paint tubes, clean the palette, and stack fresh canvases against the wall. I then apply my creative process and the studio is a mess within a short period. But out of that application of my creative energy comes a piece, a work of art, at least in an objective, if not subject, way.

While some famous artists, like Margaret Olley or Francis Bacon, have managed never to tidy up their studios and have consistently produced works out of an increasingly chaotic studio, I can only go for so long before I have to put it back into order.
As part of the creative process, I have to reserve some energy to put the studio back into order at the end of a session. This is a challenge, as I often do not regulate my energy and expend it all on the creative process. Once immersed, I tend to give it my all, but the reality is that while creativity often comes in spurts, I need to turn up every day to have consistent creative practice.

This process applies to all aspects of our lives and businesses. We have only a limited amount of energy (or time and resources) to devote to the work we do, but we need to always reserve some to keep our world in a semblance of order.

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