Some months ago, I designed an abstract stained glass panel. I had a theme in mind and had even chosen the colours. All that remained was finding the time to make it.

When I picked it up again, I intended simply to finish it. But a recent encounter stayed with me, and as I worked, I felt a spark of inspiration: a nudge to adjust the design to honour some special friendships in my life. I wanted the panel to speak of time, of friendships that have lasted through the seasons, with colours carrying their joy, growth and loss. It meant redrawing parts of the design, selecting new glass and cutting pieces all over again. It would have been easier to carry on as planned. Instead, I trusted my intuition.

The finished panel, now named Through the Seasons, is so much more interesting than the one I first designed. I love it because it is personal: it holds memories. When I look at it, I feel the warmth of every season we have shared, and it makes my heart sing. And it has made me think again about where craft ends and art begins.

I paint. I make stained glass. I bind books.

The three practices could hardly look more different. One begins with a blank canvas, another with pieces of glass, another with sheets of paper. Each demands different skills, different tools and a different kind of patience. But I have come to realise that the distinction between craft and art is not as clear as we sometimes make it.

Glass demands technique. I have to measure, score, break, grind, fit and solder. Through the Seasons needed every one of those skills, but skill alone did not make it what it became. Its meaning came from the decision to let those friendships shape it, so that each colour holds a season of shared life. What matters to me is what I can express through technique: the relationship between colour and light, fragility and strength, separation and wholeness.

When I bind a book, I am certainly practising a craft. I need to understand paper, structure, stitching and materials. I need precision. But the moment I begin asking why I am making it the way I am, something changes. I am no longer concerned only with making something well. I am thinking about what the object might mean. What should it feel like to hold? What does the choice of paper say? How should it open? What relationship should exist between the cover, the pages and the words it will contain?

Painting is no different. A painting can be skilful and still be only a picture. For me, it becomes art when it is more than that: when it is an image of my truth, made once I have come to an insight about the subject before me.

This is why silence matters so much in my process. It is a time of listening, of reaching within for what I need to hear and what I want my work to say. Often this is when the title of a piece arrives, and that moment brings both excitement and a deep sense of peace. I feel stirred and settled at the same time. It is then that I know the work is true.

We sometimes place art and craft on opposite sides of a line, as though art is about ideas and craft is about skill. But the hand and the mind work together. The craft gives me the means. The artistic intention gives those means a voice.

For me, the question is not whether something is made by hand. It is whether the making carries intention, expression and meaning. When material, technique and form communicate something beyond the object itself, the work becomes a language. It reflects something of the personality, passions and vision of the person who made it. That is when craft becomes art.

My paintings are not simply pictures.
My glass is not simply glass.
My books are not simply books.

They are the materials through which I think, feel, question and create.

The craft is how I make it. The art is why I make it.

 

What turns the things you make into something more?