I recently wrote about all the ways that my art-making is inspired by movement. One of those kinds of movement is the movement I witness in nature.

These have become my uniforms for most weekdays… my painting clothes and shoes…

Since my art-making and my life in general are both so inspired and fed by my experiences of connecting with nature, one of the things I’m exploring is how I can bring the sensory experiences and textures of nature into my work process even more.

I’ve never painted with a pre-planned and pre-mixed palette before. I’ve always just created my colours as I worked, and I also often used some colours straight from the tube.

My recent abstract commission has left me hungry to experiment more, mess more, play more … so I’ve been playing with all kinds of toys in my studio these past few weeks.

As I’m setting off into the new year, I’ve been taking some time to look back on all the art I’ve made since I committed to my art career at the end of 2020, and seeing what I can glean from that as I feel, think, and dream about what I want to create in 2024.

If you’ve been following my work for a while, you know that my first career was as a therapist and so I really appreciate the therapeutic value of art-making and I can see how I’m exploring my personal challenges, delights, and questions through my art-making. It’s fascinating and wonderful that the process of making art is so full of opportunities to know myself better and to heal and grow. I’m so grateful that I get to do this with my time and energy.

I should have known when the collectors offered the phrase, “loving what is” as a working title for the commission, that it was going to require me to grow in my ability to love what is!

Last month I enjoyed being interviewed about the inspiration and process behind my paintings. I love how they’ve integrated film of our beautiful neighbourhood Park, Maxima Park, that inspired my Wandelen series of paintings!

Making our lives is a creative act that, much like a painting, is full of choices about what’s important to us, what we want to focus on, and what we want to express. What if I replace the word “art” with “living” in Aristotle’s quote …

I lost 80% of my vision suddenly and unexpectedly at the age of 33. At first I feared I’d have to give up my love for art-making because I thought that seeing well was integral to art-making. Clearly I was wrong about this because famous and talented artists like Claude Monet and Edgar Degas both had significant vision-impairments!

Purple has never been a colour I’ve loved, but I’m really enjoying purples these days, and feeling very inspired to incorporate purples in my artwork. Perhaps it’s because of my recent Jacaranda commission that has me painting with all the purples. Or perhaps it’s just that purple is a pretty rare colour for blossoms in South Africa (outside of the Jacaranda blossoms, of course!), and I’m blown away by the variety of lovely blue and purple blossoms here in Europe.

My recent Jacaranda commission took me on quite the journey that had me reflecting on how I feel about mistakes, repair, big change, and risks, and how much I back myself and believe in my own creativity and resourcefulness. Here’s a little 3-part video series that tells the story. (Click on the video images to watch the videos on my Facebook page, and while you’re there, click “like” to follow my on Facebook, if you aren’t already!)

When we began planning to move from South Africa to the Netherlands, we knew that one of the changes we’d have to adapt to is the weather. In South Africa it’s sunny, mild, and pleasant for most of the year so we could afford to have a weather-dependent mindset.

I’ve abandoned the first rendition I painted for the Jacaranda painting commission I’m working on. It was too busy and too dark. Sometimes I have to get through a few attempts first in order to find my vision; the core experience that I want the artwork to invite the viewer into.

Earlier this year I had the good fortune of getting to create a unique commissioned artwork for friend and fellow artist, Lisa Reardon’s beautiful home in California. Lisa is a ceramicist who creates wonderful intuitively and iteratively built abstract sculptures.

This quote reminded me of the time when Zola was about 5 years old and I was rushing him to get his shoes on and he admonished me with, “I’m doing my best, but you grownups have had a lot more practice at hurrying, you know!”

We’ve been settling into our new home and I’m loving living right on the water. The sky here in the Netherlands is often moody and busy with beautiful shapes and colours, and I love the way that the water reflects and repeats all the sky beauty down at ground level.

My fun day of outdoor creative “play” culminated in an artwork that I love in many ways. And now I’m at that point where I wonder how I’ll know when it’s finished. Here are two methods I use for assessing when my art is where I want it to be, and therefore “finished.”