How a theme becomes a journey

Those of you who have good memories might remember my pondering, somewhere, that I was interested to see how my chosen theme of Unmeasured Moments would develop as I set out to paint something quite an abstract and conceptual.

Unmeasured moments is my homage to the preciousness of time. Of the life-habits we create and how we employ them with the most precious people in our lives. Of how we make the most of the little, the small and the ordinary in our lives.

It is a theme of mindfulness and appreciation derived from my experience of my own children growing far too wildly, and this year, of losing a precious friend, also a mum, far too soon: because with that, the preciousness of all of our everyday moments has been brought into sharp focus.

In painting this experience I have moved, not unfalteringly, through a journey that began with seeking to represent mindfulness and appreciation as an image, to valuing the mindfulness within my process.

To play with the paint, to experiment, to fail. To notice the sheen, the gravity, the movement. To allow the paint to create itself on the canvas. I have begun a less intentional and more mindful practice of art itself.

As my exhibition draws closer, it is becoming an important story I need to tell.

It is an unfolding. Sometimes it's a struggle. Most often, children who are growing wildly and doing what children (and pre-teens) do, don't make it easy to hold onto the preciousness of every moment. But most days there are enough to fill ourselves up, and to honour and cultivate those habits for living, if we are determined to look for them.

When it is finished, I hope my exhibition will show enough of what I have learned and the journey it has taken me on.

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Unmeasured Moments will open at the ME Art Space, 25 Atcheson St, St Leonards on 17 November.