My days have been full recently, of care, of quiet work, of holding more than I imagined I could. I’ve been meaning to write, but like many things, it had to wait until there was enough stillness to hear what wanted to say.
Some days feel made of glass.
Fragile, sharp, and hard to carry without slipping.
Living alongside someone who is unwell creates a silence that’s hard to name. It isn’t loud or dramatic. It hums beneath the surface, shaping everything. You learn to be careful with your voice, careful with joy, and careful with yourself.
To listen for the spaces between.
And yet, I have the studio.
I return to it not because I am whole, but because it is the one place where I can stop holding everything together. In the act of painting, I let go. Not of love or care, but of the tight grip I keep on each day. The canvas becomes a place where I can breathe differently.
Beneath every painting, there is one thread that never leaves:
Love.
Not the kind that seeks to fix or explain. But the kind that stays.
A quiet, steady love for beauty, for stillness, for holding space in a world that so often rushes past pain.
This came into sharp focus recently as I worked on a commission for the new Radiology Department at The Nevill Hall Hospital in Wales. A space where fear and uncertainty linger in the air. Where people wait in silence for answers they may not want to hear.
It was important to me, essential really, that the work I created offered more than aesthetic calm.
I wanted it to be a place of stillness.
A momentary shelter.
The artwork I created for that space was not about hope in the bright, triumphant sense.
It was quieter. It spoke of breath. Of the hush between moments. Of the way light can hold you gently, even when everything else feels sharp.
To be able to contribute something. To offer something in that environment was an act of quiet defiance against my own fear. A way to say: You are not alone. There is beauty here, even now.
This is what love looks like in my work.
Not declarations, but presence.
Not answers, but attention.
I was so emotional when I walked the corridors at the hospital last week, wishing that all oncology departments had the opportunity to work with artists.