A few weeks ago, I was invited to create a new body of work for an exhibition in Barcelona later this year.
I can’t quite describe how excited I am.
After several months in which life has revolved around caring for my husband, Craig, the invitation arrived like a quiet reminder that another part of my life was waiting patiently for me. It didn’t create the desire to paint; that has never left me. It gave that desire a focus. It was the gentle nudge I needed to return to the studio.
I’ve discovered that returning to painting after time away is never as straightforward as I imagined it to be.
Distance has its own quiet value. It clears stagnant ideas and, in a sense, clears the palette. The constant internal dialogue softens, familiar habits begin to fall away, and I almost always return with a clearer understanding of what the work is trying to become.
The difficult part is not wanting to paint.
It’s finding the rhythm again.
I’m not frightened of the canvas. I’m frustrated.
The hand is out of practice, and the eye becomes impatient. Marks that would normally feel instinctive become hesitant. Decisions that once happened almost without thought suddenly require complete concentration.
Over many years, the hand quietly learns things the conscious mind no longer has to explain. It remembers the weight of the brush, the resistance of the canvas, how a thin wash of oil settles across the surface and how another translucent layer can gently push a mark back into the painting without losing it completely.
Much of that knowledge lives in the body.
After time away, it isn’t lost.
It simply needs waking up.
Even after nearly forty years of painting, I still feel as though I am learning how oil behaves. It never becomes entirely predictable. Temperature, humidity, light, the surface's absorbency, and even the passage of time all influence how the paint responds. There is no formula. Each painting asks something different, and understanding the material remains one of the quiet disciplines of a lifetime’s practice.
Perhaps that is why returning can feel so uncomfortable. The muscles remember before confidence does. The hand slowly rediscovers its rhythm, and the eye begins to trust again. There is no shortcut. Only time, patience and the willingness to make the first mark.
This return has felt different.
Not because I have forgotten how to paint, but because life has reminded me that time in the studio is precious. It is something I no longer take for granted.
As I stand in front of a row of freshly primed canvases, I know that the paintings I have been carrying in my mind for months can only become real if I begin. They exist as fragments for now, half-formed thoughts and quiet possibilities. The rest will only reveal themselves through the slow process of painting.
So this is where I find myself.
Back in the studio.
The canvases are waiting.
The hand is slowly remembering.
The eye is becoming more patient.
And somewhere beyond those first uncertain marks, a new body of work is beginning to emerge.