Making my best work

Note: This was first published over on Najeroux - my graphic art studio website in May 2024

I’m sure at least a handful of people have come to note that the three-month hiatus that I announced at the end of October 2022 was much longer than advised. I was working on a wild and ambitious project. Very dear to me and the result of which is producing my best work in collaboration with my darling husband.

Our daughter was born in July of 2023 and the resulting change to our lives, my inner life, my creative practice, everything - has changed. The journey to pregnancy was painful and not possible without the support of many brilliant medical professionals. For a while there, our world was stripped back, life became the bare fundamentals of existence. My tolerance for disrespect and drama died, along with the relationships that once made me believe I deserved it.

As a family we are growing together and learning one other, finding out new and wonderful things daily. Slowly new joy and understanding is woven into the fabric of our lives. The return to the studio is slow. Slow but necessary. I continue to embrace the soft and sweet days we rock ourselves gently through, laughing and crying, still so bewildered at how lovely our lives have become. I am incredibly conscious of how much of myself I have had to give to make sure our daughter could grow. I am also aware of how by her very existence, I too grow.

So, as we approach Mother's Day in Australia, my first, I leave these quiet words. As I slowly inhale the scent of my daughter's perfect red hair as she sleeps up on me, I am grateful. Grateful for the complete unravelling and re-creation of my heart, mind, and body that she has brought from within me. Grateful that she chose me to be her mother.