Winter 2026
“Let us love winter because it is the spring of genius.” Pietro Aretino
“I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show.” Andrew Wyeth.
“Artists work best alone. Work alone.” Steve Wozniack.
In winter time slows down, the landscape gets quieter, in England this deep winter is called the hush. The hush before the growth and emergence of spring. It’s the ideal time for me to hunker down by myself and paint, somehow the quiet gives me permission to do this, so I’ve busy painting and journaling.
One of my favourite and newest practices is art journaling, it gives me freedom to create without needing to create towards an end or a product. Unconsciously it allows my art practice the freedom to be what it is and as it appears. I’ve noticed that since I’ve been journaling I’m so much more pleased with what I’ve created simply because I’m not trying so hard. I’m creating more with much less effort.
One of my most favourite recent pieces was created as a journal entry recently. I used baking paper on a cheap paper bag, and I drew a banksia flower quickly with pen and oil pastel, then washed over it with a Prussian blue wash. I wasn’t trying to create towards anything. I worked quickly and easily, almost without thinking. Looking back I can see I was “in the flow” during the whole process. I thought I was just sketching on scraps of baking paper in my art journal, but in the end I loved it. The work lived and breathed for me and its become one of my favourite works. Its not structured, but its quite resolved in its entirety. I called it A secret Banksia map, because the whole work seems to hum with a secret energy that I can’t quite decipher, like finding some kind of Rosetta stone for the landscape, and because Banksias are such ancient plants.
If your art practice has become sluggish or felt heavy to you, try art journaling for the fun of it and see where it leads you.
A secret Banksia map unframed and then framed by the wonderful Tim Zierch of Adelaide Leadlight and framing, plus another version of secret Banksia map created at the same time.
Books I’ve been reading this winter.
Windswept, Life Nature and deep time in the Scottish Highlands, Annie Worsley, 2023.
A beautiful description of the Scottish Highlands, almost like a written painting.
Careless People, a story of where I used to work, Sarah Wynn Williams, 2025. Sarah used to work at Facebook closely with Mark Zuckerberg for some year. Its described as an intimate memoir set amid powerful forces. This shocking and revealing book has completely changed my use of social media and my phone too. Its an incredible expose of the way technology has changed the ways we see each other and ourselves. Completely eye opening.
The Eights, Joanna Miller, 2026. The story of 4 very different women admitted to study at Oxford in 1920. A wonderful read about learning, about friendship and about scholarship.
