I disappeared this summer. No blogs, no Instagram, no new paintings paraded for the algorithm. I permitted myself properly and consciously … not to produce anything.

At first, it felt almost criminal. Like sneaking out of school. My inner critic was horrified:

This is not good enough. What are you doing? You’ll lose momentum. Your work is going nowhere. NOWHERE!

And in a way, she was right. I did go nowhere. Which was precisely the point.

Because the truth is: I wasn’t in the right place to paint. My paintings come from joy, the joy of being alive, of colour, of my beloved cats, of the shapes and rhythms of the world. But joy had left the building for a while. I was grieving. For my dad. For Asangha my cat. For a year that had been heavy.

And then there’s social media, which can feel like being trapped in a room where everyone is shouting their brilliant ideas at you, while you’re still trying to remember your own name. Too many voices. Too much overstimulation. My poor brain just needed silence.

So I stopped. I went outside. I sat on the grass, bare feet in the soil, sketchbook in hand. Sometimes I scribbled a five-second sketch that looked utterly terrible. Sometimes I did nothing at all. Some days I just swished ink and water across paper with big brushes like a child making mud pies. No outcome. No plan. No … is this good enough?

And here’s the magic part:

eventually, the critic got bored and wandered off.

 

 

By the end of summer, I noticed something curious. I wanted to paint again. Not in the “I must get back to work” way, but in the “I wonder what would happen if I put this pink next to that yellow?” way. The playful way.

So I started a series of canvases with one simple rule:

use the colours I love, and keep going until something delights me. I painted over what I didn’t like. I kept the tiny accidents that sang. I let the paintings breathe themselves into being.

Sometimes I’d add a cat. Because of course.

And suddenly, I had work again born from freedom, not pressure.

So that was my summer. Camping, sketching, sitting with grief, playing with inks, getting quiet enough to hear myself again. And now autumn is here, and the canvases are ready to step out into the world. You’ll see them at the Village Art Group exhibition on 1–2 November (cards, prints, and me included).

I also put together a little video of my summer — snippets of this slower, stranger, more playful season.

 

 

What did I learn?

That sometimes the most radical thing you can do as an artist is… nothing. Absolutely nothing. Just breathe. Grieve. Swish some ink. Put your feet on the ground and let the earth remind you that you are still here.

And eventually, when you’re ready, joy will slip quietly back in.