At what age does one spend more time looking back than looking forward? Is it not a matter of age, but state of mind? I have been drawing my old age pension now for more than a year and it is not a sign that I should slow down, indeed rather the opposite. I have an extra bit of financial wriggle room to be creative.

My brain is always full of future ideas. I barely finish one project than another is waiting to take flight. It is rewarding to be paid for a work of art, but that is not my motivation. What I enjoy about the creative side of the visual arts is the challenge; once an idea is visualised, the challenge of how to plan it, execute it and complete it. On the way the whole project might change shape due to the serendipity of the process. It can take an entirely new direction – that is exciting. Finally there is the moment of knowing when to stop. Stepping back and knowing that it is good. Looking at it again later, reviewing the work after days or years, I see all the blemishes and faults, but just for a moment, like a mini-version of the God of Genesis on the sixth day of creation, I see it as good.

I was watching a television programme last night on the iplayer. It was an interesting analysis of marketing and consumerism. It was looking at built-in obsolescence – the way many utilitarian objects are given a finite life span so that when they break unnecessarily early, consumers are forced to buy more. The presenter was showing how with many things, the next purchase is made before the old item is broken. It is because we want the latest cool version. As a result, many functional objects have become fashion items, and thousands of consumers find themselves on a retail treadmill.

I watched smugly thinking – how sad, fancy shaping your life around having the latest mobile phone, pair of shoes, designer watch or flat screen tv. But on reflection, maybe I am not that different. Am I not shaping my life around the next big thing in my small world – the next painting, art project whatever it might be? Do I not enjoy the thrill of the new, the satisfaction of others seeing what I have, or rather what I have done?

The only difference between me and the retail zombies I suppose is that I think I am not being manipulated. I choose to make art and I decide for myself what I will do next. The fashion slaves, the sad ones of the shopping malls, are having their minds and choices shaped and controlled by the big corporate players in the capitalist system.

But more fool me for thinking that way. Perhaps I am really the deluded one? Is there any such thing as real choice? Everything we choose is selected from within very narrow confines. The shopper in the mall cannot buy anything that has not already been made, marketed, advertised and put on display by someone else. And my creative mind is every bit as constrained. I am the sum of my life experience, my cultural inheritance and my technical skills. I cannot draw out of my mind what is not already there in some shape or form already.

Unless… in the world of art there can be moments of inspiration. That flash of realisation that something has arrived from somewhere beyond an landed in my imagination that has never had shape or existence on this earth before. They are rare moments, but they are what all artists strive and live for. It is why the next idea is so important, for even if the last project was truly a work of genius, it was only truly inspirational in the first split second of its conception.