Behind a creative collaboration

It started with two friends, two different creative practices and a shared curiosity about what might happen if we brought them together.

Natasha and I first met in Paris through our corporate careers. We became friends and discovered that we had both maintained creative lives alongside our working ones. Natasha had been writing poetry for years, while I had been painting and drawing for as long as I can remember.

A couple of decades later, Natasha was still writing in Paris and I was painting in Manchester, with a five year detour to Athens in between. We were both spending more time on our creative work, and we began talking about what might happen if we collaborated on a project.

From those conversations, we created Creative Bubbles by The Randoms.

How did the collaboration begin?

At first, we experimented. Natasha sent me poems, I responded with images, and we exchanged a great many messages about words, colour, composition and meaning.

I soon realised that I did not need to reproduce everything Natasha described in a poem. I might respond to one image, a particular mood, a colour or something I think she has suggested between the lines.

Sometimes I interpret her words in a way neither of us expected. By the time we publish something, we may both have revised our contributions several times.

How much do we influence each other?

Quite a lot. We discuss every piece and neither of us considers her own contribution beyond question. We suggest changes, challenge choices and occasionally disagree. Having known one another for so long makes that possible.

We also read the poems aloud as part of our process. When we hear the words spoken, we sometimes notice changes in rhythm, emphasis or meaning that we missed while reading them on the page. Friends and family occasionally join the editing process too.

One of our favourite examples came from Love Collage. I had worked strawberries, avocados, bubbles and flowers from Natasha’s poem into the illustration. Then Natasha’s mum looked at it and asked one question.

‘Where’s the butterfly?’

She was right. Somehow, after all the reading, sketching and painting, I had completely missed it. I duly added a cabbage white and it made all the difference.

We still talk about the butterfly because it reminds us how easily we can become so familiar with our own work that we miss something another person notices immediately.

What do we create?

We write and make art about love, identity, ageing, beauty, loss, relationships, uncertainty and observations about people and life. I work across drawing, painting, watercolour, oils and digital illustration, and I choose an approach according to how I interpret each poem. Sometimes I simply want to experiment. We both enjoy the unpredictability of working this way. I rarely know what Natasha will send me next, and she is never quite sure what I will make from it.

We are now bringing selected poems and illustrations together for our first anthology. We once talked about it as something we might make ‘one day’. Eighteen months later, we are actively working towards it.

Alongside the finished work, we also want to share more of what we do before publication, including ideas we abandon, poems we alter, illustrations we drop, things we discover and the occasional missing butterfly.

If you have only just found us, have a look through the collection. Read a poem, spend some time with an illustration and explore the subjects that interest you. You have space to comment below and we'd love to hear from you. You can, if you wish, also suggest a new theme for us.

Natasha & Rebecca

The Randoms

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