You know that strange moment when you walk back into your office or studio after something big has happened……and it feels unfamiliar. The light’s the same. The table’s where you left it. Your brushes are exactly as you abandoned them. But you’re not.
That’s the bit no one prepares you for. I was speaking to an artist recently who had just come back from caring for a parent after a sudden bereavement. She said, “I’m desperate to get back into my practice. I need it. But I can’t seem to think.”
That sentence, that tension, stayed with me – I need it, but I can´t.
Because when life throws something heavy at you – death, illness, divorce, redundancy, even something that looks positive but is destabilising – your system shifts. You go into care mode. Logistics mode. Survival mode.
