Notes from the studio
stuff I’m thinking about, stuff I’m working on.
So much of the artistic life demands one to keep returning to the source. I’ve been coming back to the question of what it means to live each moment in dedication to this centre, this source, that makes the supernatural aspects of creativity possible.
At this moment my practice is developing like a compost pile. I’m gathering, learning, reading, layering insights upon insights; tilling the land, sowing the seeds. In this process I have recognised my work’s true pace and how I’d like to design my work-life in alignment with my inwardness. I’ve realised that there are always two overarching seasons in my practice: expression and incubation. The season of expression is often defined as an energetic radiance. When all my creative desires and intentions are directed outward in the material realm, looking to find mediums and languages to express the velocity of my ideas with full force. While there is room for experimentation, the expressions are more refined—leading to a strong body of works and a thesis to back them up. My last season of expression started from early 2023 to mid 2025, after which the season of incubation began.
In this incubatory timeline, I’m hardly creating. I’m imploding. All energies are moving steadily, sometimes chaotically, inward. I’m being called to reflect, to observe, to take notes, to rest, to get supremely bored. Everything in my body and soul refuses to follow the modern traditions of productivity. Even when I do feel like painting, I’m unable to produce a consistent body of work. And through this I’ve understood that this season demands a lot of inner work, with more space given to doing nothing, to play and experiment— an attempt at new mediums/skills/ideas. I find myself keen to build my writing voice with an urgency I can’t explain. I want to write about worlds and stories, and not just paint them. As though somehow writing could complete this unfinished circle of creative yearning. And this eagerness to write is taking me into some interesting depths of my sleepy subconscious. As I’m starting into the research phase for a new series of works, I want to make writing a necessary part of it. The exchange between painting and writing feels very fresh and full of possibilities as both inform each other in esoteric ways.
I have always loved my season of expression because there is momentum and an extroversion that makes me participate in the world actively. Incubation season is slow and introverted, a kind of withdrawal that demands my patience at its highest capacity. It’s the underworld of a creative life, a return to roots—I’m in the underground searching for my soul, not the company of the external world. It reminds me that I cannot be my highest creative self if I’m not doing the spiritual work that is expected from me, because both complement each other. With time I think I’m slowly becoming adept at navigating life’s uncertainty now. 5 years of meditation and breath-work practice has certainly helped me step outside of my mind and look at its fidgety nature with a sense of compassion.
Someone who’s helping me move through this moment of great reset is the artist, writer and opera singer Vanessa Aldrich. I’ve been obsessed with her sharp-tongued lectures on the ‘mythology of the artist’ on YouTube. She presents the framework of Joseph Campbell’s ‘hero’s journey’ and demands us to move out from the adolescent view of our artistic pursuits and into a more heroic understanding of it—our creative coming-of-age. Something she said that really stuck with me was that ‘the mythological journey is the soul’s adventure through the human’, that all myths are unfolding in the field of our consciousness. I have been working through her incredible journal prompts lately and am stumped at the amount of crap I have believed about myself and my work over the years.
Incubating is when I am called back to the source— a stream running into a cave. Expression is when the source ushers forth into the world like a waterfall. While I gestate my creative energies, I am going back to studying, attending to those practices that support my inwardness. I have rekindled my devoted passion to reading which has helped me wean off of social media significantly, I’ve started writing more and more—on my substack and off; my observation and intuitive skills have deepened as have my meditations. The drop in expressive momentum has brought a steadiness of pace that I didn’t know I desperately needed. Perhaps I’m being ripened for the next big thing.
Maybe this moment exists to reorient myself back to playing soulfully. To keep showing up in the changing seasons of my work with an intensity I may have lost along the way. I don’t know how long this season of incubation will last and I cannot foresee how I will show up in my expressive season because everything is uncertain. The only sustainable trick is to say yes to life.
xo
I really relate to this! What a great to think about incubation and creation.