I am very sensitive to beautiful things.

An intro as an entree.

Growing up, my mother had this avant-garde ability to turn the seemingly ordinary into significant wonder. Industrious and improvisational by default, both recognisable capes and strong resourceful traits of hers— ones likely due to the conditions of lack that grew her in the kingdom of her childhood.

They say the first seven years of life are monumental in the development of a child’s imagination, it’s here that the brain rapidly develops its unique mapping system forming repetitions and patterns, ones that rhythmically become almost like a life imprint.

My mothers largesse approach to life is deeply embedded in my formative years. We didn’t have much, but with my mums presence, her imagination and her observational nature in fostering a life of beauty, we had absolutely everything.

It’s my mothers unwavering connection to her imagination that reflects instinctively how I approach my entire process, creatively.

Little Tess

My lineage has stories upon stories within stories— I have enjoyed over the years learning of courage and bravery and of wild escapes across European borders, I have become friends with my nomadic constitution because of these stories and I have been gifted context to the way I am made up as a woman and maker because of them.

In the art of remembering, it was my mothers unhesitant life rhythm in my early childhood that reads a clear communiqué, one found singing gently through everything she did— that anything could be made from something and something could be made from anything.

I see a strong and tenacious will to find beauty, regardless—

To remain sensitive to it,

to notice it.

I see familiar patterns stretched across the lives of my siblings, seeping into the outworking of my daughters lives too. I look back and I look forward and I see patterns, I see process, I see the lines of life and creativity bleed and blur into each other in a way that it is all adjoined.

My daughters and I

Among many things, the standout fruit of my first seven years is the unwavering belief that

there is beauty.

Wether genetics, ancestral hand-me-downs, or innate by design, it feels default to move in the art of improvisation, to connect with my imagination, to notice beauty with a sense that there is plenty—

My mother’s intention carved an understanding in me that art isn’t just something “we do” but something “we live” and with this I believe creativity is not simply what we do here,

but it is how we

be

here.

My mother and me

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As promised in my preface Part one: My creative Process is almost ready to arrive in your mail-box. Admittedly I was hoping to send it out this week but it has in the most beautiful of ways become more detailed in the way I have chosen to write it. It has gently become much like a long and slow feast.

A pause, some time carved, an unhurried moment is of advice upon its arrival.

My creative process, although in many ways is simple, has not been simple to break down. So I have shared this piece today as an entree to break it up and allow you to digest the intro first and next week feast upon the detailed body of work.

“What is my creative process made up of?”

Often being deep in the process, living in it, moving with it, there is but rare occasion to step outside of it and be audience to it— so with that, I have written the piece in a way that honours this question for both myself and as an act of hospitality, giving it detailed time, to share it in a full bodied way through words.

This piece to arrive will offer a free preview to all subscribers and the full crux and body of work will be exclusively available to paid subscribers. Your decision to upgrade is a gesture of kinship, an acknowledgment that you value what you read here. Thank you for sowing here, for this opportunity to push my own limits and find the words begging to be found, just beneath the words on top.

xo