Play is SERIOUS Work
Day 23 30-Day Art Challenge October 2025 (Marie-Louise Bahnson)
The more you treat play as a practice, the more meaning appears in the work.
Play is often misunderstood.
It’s seen as frivilous, optional, or indulgent; something you return to once the real work is done. But in creative practice, play isn’t a detour. It’s a method. It’s vital!
When play is treated seriously, meaning begins to surface.
Play Without Pressure
Play removes the demand for immediate results.
There’s no expectation to resolve, explain, or justify. This absence of pressure creates space for curiosity, for marks made simply to see what happens next. The work becomes exploratory rather than performative.
In that openness, ideas breathe.
Practice, Not Distraction
Play is most powerful when it’s practiced consistently.
Returning to playful exploration trains flexibility. It keeps the work responsive and alive. Over time, patterns emerge, not through planning, but through repeated experimentation.
What begins as play often becomes the foundation of deeper, more resolved work.
Risk Lives Here
Play invites risk without consequence.
Because the stakes feel lower, you’re more willing to try what might not work. This is where unexpected breakthroughs occur; in gestures that weren’t overthought, in combinations that weren’t pre-approved.
Play gives permission to fail, and in doing so, expands what’s possible.
Meaning Through Engagement
Meaning doesn’t arrive through force.
It appears when you’re fully engaged: attentive, curious, and present. Play sharpens that engagement. It keeps the work connected to sensation rather than strategy.
The more you return to play, the more the work begins to speak on its own terms.
Taking Play Seriously
To treat play seriously is to honour its role.
It’s not separate from discipline or depth, it feeds them. Play sustains momentum, renews interest, and keeps the process human.
So make space for it. Return to it often.
Because when play becomes practice, the work gains both freedom and meaning.
