I’ve been asking myself a simple question lately, and sitting with it longer than I expected:
Why do I make art at all?
Not why I post it. Not why I sell it. Not why I teach it.
But why I keep coming back to the quiet, sometimes frustrating, often uncertain act of making something with my hands.
The honest answer is that there have been stretches of time where art felt distant from me.
Where it became something I managed, scheduled, explained, or justified instead of something I listened to. I still showed up, but not always for the right reasons. Not always with my whole self.
And eventually, I noticed the difference.
When I’m not really making art, when I’m just producing, I feel it everywhere. I feel it in my body. In my patience. In how flat the days start to feel. Art, for me, isn’t decorative. It’s not a bonus. It’s how I make sense of things I don’t yet have words for.
I make art to slow time down.
To notice what I would otherwise rush past.
To hold grief, memory, longing, and wonder without needing to explain them away.
I make art because there are parts of my story that don’t want to be spoken plainly. They want colour. They want metaphor. They want birds, water, houses, moths, stranger’s faces, all the strange stand-ins that say, this mattered, even if I don’t fully understand why yet.
Lately, I’ve been recommitting to that version of art-making. The quieter one. The honest one. The kind that isn’t trying to impress anyone, but is trying very hard to tell the truth.
That doesn’t mean it’s easy. It means I’m choosing to show up anyway. To keep learning, keep paying attention, keep trusting that the work knows where it wants to go, even when I don’t.
If you’re reading this and feeling a little disconnected from your own creative work, I want you to know that you’re not broken and you’re not alone. Sometimes the work is simply asking us to come back with fresh eyes and a softer grip.
This is me doing that.
Recommitting to making art that feels like mine. Recommitting to telling my story honestly, even when it unfolds slowly. Recommitting to the long, meaningful work of paying attention.
Thank you for being here with me, for reading, for witnessing, and for letting my work sit alongside your life in whatever small way it does.
See you next time!
Say yes to improving your basic watercolour skills and join my for Watercolour Foundations: Finding Confidence in Watercolour. Learn more
