My next commission is an abstract in blues, but Yellow insisted on playing too. She said she’d promise to be shy and stay in the background if I let her go first.

I painted outside again the other day. At first I was a bit annoyed that the trees were casting shadows on my artwork, which changed the colours and the dark/ light values, making it difficult for me to assess how the work was developing.

Your art doesn’t need to match your decor. Of course, it can if you’d like that…

This morning I traveled by train to Almere, to take my artwork to a fine art scanner so it can be digitized for printing. It’s my first solo train ride, so I was a little nervous about finding the right train and being on time for my appointment.

There have been so many new beginnings over the past month. My art-making and life feel full of new possibilities. There’s also so much I treasure from previous chapters and want to make sure to bring with me into this next chapter of my art (and life.)

Something surprising and hilarious happened in my studio and I have to tell you all about it because it delivered me a perfectly-timed and much-needed truth-bomb, and it’s all still giving me the giggles…

Both my art-making and life-making these days are asking me to stop over-functioning and let go of my training into the idea that understanding and being understood are required in order to enjoy art (and life).

If you’ve spent any time around here, you’ll have noticed that I really LOVE South African flora, especially Proteas. I was reflecting the other day on how many many different versions of Proteas I’ve created, and how exploring their quirky shapes, colours, and textures never gets old.

I spent the morning playing with different media and versions of a beach landscape, exploring different media, line, light, color, space, texture, edges, and shape.

I was struggling to start making art on a large canvas today so I tried a trick that’s worked before… instead of trying to make art on the prepared canvases, I got out some Gesso and prepared some more large canvases.

I’ve been learning so much about abstract art lately, and doing a lot of noticing what I like, when I feel a piece works, and trying to figure out what it is that’s making it feel like it works.

This week, after getting in touch with some big grief I’ve been feeling, I sat and created some “Happy-mess” ink sketches of one of the things I appreciate now more than ever. We still share lots of cuddles and physical affection between the 3 of us in our household, but I grieve deeply for all of the other physical touch, closeness, and affection that Covid has stolen from me.

Almost every weekend, and often on both weekend days these days, we visit our favourite beach. It’s become something of a ritual with all the same elements that the four of us love, and so we repeat it all every time …

Having so enjoyed creating the Deconstructed Aloes series, and celebrating the business development success I’ve been enjoying in recent months, I went to bed with a very full and happy heart, looking forward to creating a series of Deconstructed Proteas the next day. But the next morning I woke to an unexpected and very worrying new development…

My history of art training was very much in the classical kind of representational art, where the goal is to observe really carefully and produce realistic art. It was the loss of 80% of my eye sight in 2013 that changed my art-making style and gave me the courage and new perspectives I needed to be able to make more expressive and abstracted kinds of artworks. These days I love working with magazine paper cuttings, so I’ve been playing with creating more abstract and expressive artworks with those.

I often get requests for framing suggestions when people buy my art. There are SO MANY frames to choose from, and then there are mats (the card borders that you can place between the artwork and the frame) and glass options too! How do you decide?!

If you live outside of the Netherlands and have been considering purchasing one of my originals, here’s what you can expect the shipping process to involve.

I don’t know about you, but this Covid pandemic has me feeling like my life has been taken over by a constant decision-making cycle of checking the local infection numbers, trying to get a sense of how careful others in our social circle are being, re-evaluating the risks of anything that involves leaving our house, weighing the risks against each family member’s (un)met needs, and trying to figure out what’s safe enough for us to do.