I’m painting again!

2024 was the year of fairies. It was all I wanted to make. I spent my days covered in clay and I painted here and there but with no real focus and attention.

I painted the same 3 paintings over and over again for months with no resolution because I wasn’t paying enough attention and that’s ok because my fairies were thriving. I started a youtube channel and I felt like I was really just enjoying my clay work but then summer rolled around and with it the heat.

I have no air conditioner in my workshop so on some days it was nearly impossible to work in there. Then at the start of 2025 I got covid and it really knocked me around. I did not have the energy to play with clay and so I picked up a paintbrush and I just started pushing paint around on paper, because I can’t rest I have to be creating something at all times.

This stirred something inside me again. I felt my love for painting rise to the surface and I started waking in the morning excited to get up and paint. I felt very discouraged with my failed paintings from 2024 so I was hesitant to paint on canvas but I had one small blank canvas and I thought why not and so I started painting and a week later this painting revealed itself on the canvas.

I finished this painting on a Friday and the next day I showed a customer in my gallery and they bought it, I had only sold 1 painting in 2024. I believe the universe shows us signs to lead us to our potential, it’s up to us to see these signs and trust we are on the right path. I see this as a sign, that I’m a painter as well as a ceramicist and a poet.

My ideal life is to go to my workshop everyday and paint and make fairies and write poetry from sunup to sundown.. but unfortunately I also have to live a life, I need to eat, buy groceries, make videos and content for social media. Pay the bills, clean the house etc. and so if I’m not watching the signs I sometimes end up not on the right path or on no path at all and I lose touch with the things that bring me joy.

I have started 3 more canvases since finishing this painting and I have also started a new collection of fairies that I’m in love with (My energy is finally back after covid). I haven’t written a poem in a while, I actually haven’t been writing much at all until today and I so I think that’s about return to me also because I’m enjoying this so much.

The creative life can be a difficult one, because the desire to create can overtake everything else. It’s frustrating not being able to lock yourself away for weeks and just create. There’s people that need me and then there’s also the self sabotage part of my personality, but that’s a story for another day.

In the end I’m back painting and enjoying it and excited to paint again and so I ‘m going to ride this wave for as long as possible.

Gemma x