THE PAUSE: Take a moment and press the pause button (No.1)

Welcome to my blog ‘The Pause’.  An invitation to join me on a journey through my art, life, nature and her seasons, and the thread that runs through all of them.

My blog will be a series of reflections, written month by month, following the cycles of the seasons. ‘A Year in Layers’ will take us on a seasonal journey through art, memory, and renewal. It will follow what I am working on in my art and the threads that run through it. Things such as seasonal rhythms, the reasons we are drawn to nature, the layers of memory, and the quiet weight of what life throws at us. My hope is that, in sharing my musings, you might feel something of your own reflected back, whether through a phrase, a fragment of a story or something as simple as a colour that resonates with you.

Each month I will write about what I am making, what I am noticing, and why I create at all. It is not a tutorial, not a diary, but something in between, a conversation between my work, the natural world, and the shifting seasons of life.

So here we begin, at the turning of the tide. September is my first step into this year long journey, a circle of endings and beginnings, held together in paint, paper and words.

Imagined Shores

This month always reminds me of thresholds. Times in life when I’ve had to let go of one chapter before I fully knew what the next one would hold. September holds a bittersweet tension, a farewell and an arrival wrapped together. Life and loss has a way of teaching us this rhythm, that endings are never sharp but blurred, that they ebb slowly like a receding tide. My own history with grief has made me sensitive to this in between space that reappears at this time of year for me.

I think that is why this month calls to me to notice more closely. The edges of leaves turning, the longer shadows, the smell of the first wood smoke in the air. These small signals carry memory, both personal and universal, as though nature itself is whispering “This is how we move forward," again and again.

In the studio, September pulls me towards earthier colours, rusts, ochres, deep reds. I find myself layering paper fragments like fallen leaves, painting washes that drift and overlap like tides. My mixed media work becomes a kind of mapping of transition, nothing fixed, everything shifting.

Watercolour especially feels right at this time of year. It’s transparency echoes the way the light thins in September, softer yet more poignant. And when I layer it with collage, I am reminded of the way memories and present moments overlap, never separate, always in conversation. Each piece I made this month feels like a shoreline, balancing what is leaving and what is arriving. 

I wonder where you feel the turning of the tide in your own life right now. Do you notice it in the season itself, in your routines, or perhaps in a more personal transition? I invite you to pause with it, just for a moment, and notice how change always carries both loss and possibility.

Shifting Tides

As the tide shifts, so does the light. Next month I will step into the shadows to see what depth they hold. I will be leaning into a personal project, at the moment titled 'The Grief Project' but as I move through October, I will search for a more poignant name. It will consist of small mixed media pieces on paper, exploring thoughts, emotions, marks and colour. I look forward to sharing them with you.

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