At the edge of losing and finding

There are moments in the work where something opens.

After a long period of dryness, I began to feel a quiet clarity — a sense of what I am drawn to and how I want the work to be.

It felt hard won. Something recognised rather than invented.

And with that came an unexpected tension.

A desire to hold onto it.

To not lose it again through too much movement, too much experimentation, too much noise.

At the same time, I know that the work does not arrive through control alone. It often appears through accident, through play, through moments I did not plan.

Yesterday I felt that edge clearly.

In trying to push the work in ways that did not feel natural to me, something tightened. The work felt forced and I could no longer recognise myself in it.

And then, in the most unguarded place — on the surfaces where paint had simply been pressed and left — something else appeared.

Quieter. Truer.

Not made deliberately, but not accidental either.

Recognisable.

It showed me something important.

That my way of working may not be about adding more, or pushing further, but about noticing, responding, and allowing something to emerge without force.

Perhaps this is a form of discernment.

Not rejecting play, but finding the conditions in which it becomes genuine.