We’ve all been there. You meet someone new, polite conversation begins, and then the question arrives:
“So, what do you do?”

These days, I can just about manage to say, without tripping over the words, “I’m an artist.”
It’s taken me a while to get there, I’ll admit. Saying it out loud once felt oddly vulnerable — as though I needed to justify it, explain it, soften it somehow. Now I say it more easily, though the response is often the same:

“Oh, how lovely — you must spend all day painting.”

I would normally describe myself as an optimist with a healthy dose of realism and a touch of cynicism thrown in for good measure. Most of the time I potter along quite happily, but every so often, something happens that throws me off kilter, leaving me somewhat discombobulated (what a fabulous word that is!!). I know this affects my creativity as my emotional state and creativity are intertwined.

For me, creating art is a mostly solitary business. I am, at heart, an introvert; I don’t like drawing attention to myself. That’s not to say I can’t shout if I have to, or make conversation with anyone and everyone, but just know, that it’s not always easy for me. I have to give myself a ‘talking to’, and haul that metaphorical carapace around myself