12 Aliveness

On coming back after a pause

The past winter was the tail end of a very full year. It was fulfilling as a family season, but creatively, I could feel something in me withering.

Then April came, and I began again.

Now I’m slowly rebuilding my practice, one day at a time. And whenever I return to a practice after a pause, it feels as though I’ve forgotten everything.

The studio, the sketchbook, the paints — all of it feels distant and lifeless. There’s no temperature to it, like an abandoned house. I stand there, unsure, as if I’m facing something almost dead.

The energy in a mark can be lost so easily. Sometimes it remains.

And in that moment, what feels most missing is aliveness.

So that becomes the thing I desperately look for. Aliveness in marks, in lines, anywhere I can feel something beyond me, something alive.

And once I find it, I protect it, tend to it, nurture it.

Not every day, but slowly, I feel something returning.