IMAGE

As I opened the curtains that morning, it was like I had opened my eyes. Light flooded into a darkened room, a feeling of gratitude alight in my shadowed heart. I hadn’t known life outside the room of my mind for a while - if you had looked into my eyes you wouldn’t have seen anyone - but opening the curtains felt like a new start. The plants on my window ledge spoke to me in hushed tones, telling me things were different now. I felt the sun warm against my cheeks. I couldn’t wish for a better feeling than that of the day embracing me with open arms. /This is more than me. This has always been more than me./ As I walked down the stairs, out the door, and into the world, I reminded myself of what it was like to sense the love of the planet wash over me. So simple. So pure. Free of any complexity. I breathed it in and let myself feel. I haven’t closed my eyes since.

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mixed media on canvas, 30 x 50 cm

He sat there a while, with his brush to paper, colours burning into one another. eyes fixed on eyes. like a mirror of a fantasy world, the paper transformed with each stroke, gently guiding his life into something it wasn’t, into something it could be, into something unrecognisable. with the moulding of a new life came the melting away of another, hands seeping into the violet sky. a faint smile of peace, fear, serenity. a bruised paintbrush lay atop a masterpiece.

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acrylic & mixed media on canvas, 60 x 90 cm

With a pen in hand, it’s hard not to get swept up inside your head. Words jumble about your mind like a bingo machine as each one rolls out; a new sequence, a new line-up. The result of a thousand random moments condensed and ordered. Except no one can win at this game. Plucking at memories, observations, a story fumbles its way into existence. It wants to be told, needs to be told. It breeds inside your heart. Others watch your gaze stare off into another world, oblivious to the sounds of the present moment filtering their way through the chaos - you filter out it all. It’s just you and a pen and a life that has just started living. Lost in thought. A book waiting to happen.

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Acrylic & mixed media on canvas, 60 x 70 cm

The hills roll into the horizon and I wonder how it must feel to fall so effortlessly. The darkened clouds don’t need to worry when the rain seeps into the grass or trickles down the edge of nature’s slanting ways. It’s a haze in my mind - constant - the want to fall away without a trace. How can I dig my feet into the earth without digging into the earth at all? Feeling the leaves lick my coat, and my eyes, shining, behind strands of hair, it’s not fair that I hold myself up... with open arms... for something. Nature rolls on, and on, I ask for permission.

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Acrylic & mixed media on canvas, 60 x 90 cm

He passed you many times over the year - the skyline a backdrop to his life. He could never challenge the limits of the sky, not like those skyscrapers, not with a body pressed under the power of infrastructure. Who could? So you’d think one day he’d fall prey to the birds, swarming around his head and soaring beyond every obstacle that lay at his feet. Instead, he followed them, allowed them to whisper freedom in his ear. He walked the paths of the street as if they were the paths of the sky and then, he could not help but fly - it was his destiny. He’d always been striding with a sense of purpose, had you seen it differently. Ambition isn’t always what we want it to be.

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Mixed media & acrylic on canvas, 60 x 80 cm

She sat him down and told him that life is not as short as we think it is. That as each moment passes, we wonder about the next one, the one after that, the one far in the future where maybe things aren’t quite how we want them to be, but the only time that really matters is now. He tells her that she is right, that the only time where we truly let go of everything from the past and everything from the future is when we laugh - a real laugh - and so that’s what they do. In the small moment they share, with smiles reflected in each other’s eyes, they realise there are more smiles than they can ever catch; there are more smiles than they can appreciate but they are there and real and meaningful. Smiles will come and go effortlessly as they laugh away all of time.

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SOLD

She sat him down and told him that life is not as short as we think it is. That as each moment passes, we wonder about the next one, the one after that, the one far in the future where maybe things aren’t quite how we want them to be, but the only time that really matters is now. He tells her that she is right, that the only time where we truly let go of everything from the past and everything from the future is when we laugh - a real laugh - and so that’s what they do. In the small moment they share, with smiles reflected in each other’s eyes, they realise there are more smiles than they can ever catch; there are more smiles than they can appreciate but they are there and real and meaningful. Smiles will come and go effortlessly as they laugh away all of time.

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SOLD

She knelt in front of the garden, poking at the soil. Her fingers traced the delicacy of the flower petals as she watched a tiny caterpillar scoot across a leaf. She was a flower in this garden too. Roses adorned her headband and a beautiful dress draped across her knees. She felt like a fairy in wonderland. Her mother tapped her on the shoulder, telling her it was time to go home, but the little girl wanted to stay. This was a day so magical she couldn’t help but feel that nature was her friend. Eventually, she pushed herself upwards towards the smile of her mother, her dress falling back down to her tippy toes. As they walked under the floral archway, she felt nature’s magic tingle in the soft palm of her hand. She wished she could hold onto it forever.

I look into his eyes and I wonder what he will be as time ages him. I wonder what colour hair he will grow and what type of car he will own. Will he put on a uniform like one of his toy soldiers? Will he learn musical notes like his ABC? I wonder if he’ll still gently tap my arm to get my attention, if his eyes will grow into those of kind understanding. Maybe he’ll call me up for advice. Maybe he won’t call at all. He’ll take an afternoon nap when times get the best of him, and then he’ll wake up to my smile in the corner of a picture frame. I wonder if he’ll remember how I raised him. I wonder if he’ll think about the past at all. I look into his eyes and I wonder what he will be as time ages him, but it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, I will still hold his head to my heart.

Her dress is like the sky - perfectly blue yet changing, altering at every glance, and she is changing too. As she sits atop the well, a voice calls out from below. He’s telling her that her new self is welcome here, that we all live inside this world that, after we jump out of the well of our own habits, our life transforms. She says she doesn’t feel welcome in this fairytale. He tells her no one does - not when the sky rains glitter and the forest hides wolves and there’s no bridge between magic and utter despair. She watches her reflection in the murky waters but no longer dips her feet into the past. A pocket of light escapes the water’s surface - a reflection of the greater light above.

I don’t remember the last time I saw a butterfly. It’s something so rare and temporary and fleeting that it leaves before I get a chance to ask it to stay. But I’ll remember it this time. I’ll remember its gentle flutter like my eyelashes - its desire to move, weave, free itself of any kind of path. And as I find my eyes rolling, curving, following the butterfly’s dance I wonder what small change happened today. What voice out there called for a different ending as there was a flutter of a butterfly’s wings? Because in the chaos of this world and the chaos of my memory I can’t remember the first butterfly I saw, but they hover behind all of our eyes, blinking change into the world.

You breathe in the scent of the day for the first time in a while. your chin reaches up to the sky, to the trees, to everything. you like to think fallen leaves make a home out of random people’s hair, like maybe you make a home out of living in your own little bubble. in the pace of your life you forget about all of this - breathing in... living within... dreaming... it all comes from inside of you. let the wind slap your cheek. let it remind you, remind you, to look.

it’s only in the middle of the field that you can hear it - the subtle plucking of the heart in a tune sailing through the wind. you can almost reach out and touch it, grasp at the notes just before they dissipate into nothingness. autumn leaves dance to the music of the field and you’re left stuck in the middle of a cacophony of sound, twirling and twirling and twirling around in a dizzying calmness. reaching out you know you could never really grasp this - this beautiful ghost of a sound.

Acrylic on paper