I used to get to the office before anyone else arrived.

Six in the morning. The strip lights flickering on one by one down the corridor. The coffee machine starting up somewhere down the hall. I would sit there in the blue light of my laptop starting up and think: of course this is what I do. This is what people do.

I did not know I was missing anything. I just could not find myself in any of it.

I had studied Biomedical Science at university. I worked in medical writing, developing strategic communications for pharmaceutical companies. I was good at it. I liked parts of it. I had built something that looked, from the outside, like exactly what it was supposed to look like.

And one morning the laptop blue-screened.

In the perfectly silent office, in the particular hush of six in the morning before anything had started, I heard myself say, really quietly: is this what I am meant for?

That question changed my life.

Coming back to making

I had always made things. As a child, constantly. Through university, in the margins. But in the years of building a career I had let it slip the way you let things slip when life fills up and the things that are only for you stop fitting.

I picked up alcohol inks for the first time about a year before I left corporate life. I bought them on a whim. I set up at my kitchen table, poured the first ink onto the tile, and watched it move. To understand what happens with alcohol ink and why it feels the way it does, read my post on what alcohol ink art is.

And something in me said: there. That.

Not in a dramatic way. In a quiet, certain way. The colours looked alive. I was completely present in a way I had not been in the office in years.

Making peace with the transition

I did not leave corporate life immediately. I stayed for another year while I figured out what making art seriously would actually look like. I painted at my kitchen table in the evenings and at weekends.

And I was afraid. I want to be honest about that. The version of me that was afraid of leaving the structure, the salary, the career that had cost so much to build, was present and loud for a long time.

What was louder was the question I had asked myself in that empty office at six in the morning. And what I learned in those years about letting go of control is something I have written about in my post on what alcohol ink taught me about letting go of control.

Why I make what I make

I make art for women who are somewhere in the conversation I was having with myself in that office. Not necessarily about to leave their career. But in the quieter version, where the life is full and working and something in them keeps asking: is there more room than this?

I believe your home can be part of the answer. A room that holds you. A wall that gives you something rather than asking for something. If you want to understand what feeling your home is trying to create, read my post on what your home says about how you want to feel.

That is what I make. That is why.

If any of this speaks to something in you, I would love for you to see what I make. My store is here and I cannot wait to see you there.