Does the idea of a blank page terrify you? Has it been years since you last put pen to paper? I get it. I spent years holding myself to expectations that weren't really mine — other people's version of doing it right, exams, achievements, looking like I had it together. Then life got bigger than I could hold up that way, and I just ran out of energy for it. Art is where I came back to myself, slowly, with nobody grading it this time.

I made a lot of art in those early years, and I bought a lot to make it — paper wrapped in plastic, pens shipped from wherever. It was helping me, but it started to feel wrong too, like I'd become someone's cash cow for the privilege of discovering myself. So I started making my own materials instead — inks from elderberries and oak galls and nettle and mugwort, foraged from the hedgerows around the farm. Making my own ink turned out to be its own kind of self-care, slow and hands-in-it, and I liked that better than just buying my way to feeling okay.

Foraging under the oaks — where a lot of the ink begins.

Circles run through most of what I make. Mandalas, sacred geometry, pattern. I love that a circle is complete — it holds you, whole, as you are — and that it can overlap with other circles and make something neither could alone. Imperfect, because none of that was ever about getting it right. The studio sits on the same farm where my kids were born, learned to walk, learned to ride bikes — twelve years of history here. I'm an introvert who needs people: I don't do small talk, but I'll sit with you in real conversation for as long as you want it.