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

I love all three, but they touch different parts of me.

There is something about painting that reaches deeper. When I paint, there is very little between what is stirring inside me and what appears on the canvas. I make a mark, respond to it, cover it, scrape it away, add another colour. I do not always know where the work is going. I listen, I respond, I wrestle, and slowly something begins to emerge. It is essential that I am tuned in to my intuition and trust it.

Sometimes I look at the finished painting and realise that something in me has found its way onto the surface.

Stained glass is different. I love the light, the colour, the precision and the physicality of working with glass. Bookbinding has its own quiet satisfaction—the rhythm of folding, sewing and bringing separate pieces together into something whole. They are beautiful crafts, and I treasure what they allow me to make. The critical decisions come early in the process.

But painting feels more like a conversation with my inner self. It is an ongoing dialogue.

And that has made me think about what happens when someone buys a piece of art.

You may simply see something beautiful. A colour that delights you. A shape that catches your eye. Something that will look wonderful in your home. And that is a perfectly good reason to buy it.

When you buy a piece of art, you are buying something more. You are taking home a little of the way an artist sees. A fragment of their imagination, their questions, their joys, their struggles, their way of making sense of the world.

So when you choose art, I invite you to look beyond “Is this beautiful?”

Ask instead: “What is this saying to me? What does it make me feel? What part of the artist’s world am I inviting into mine?”

Because when you buy art, you do not just take home something beautiful. You take home a piece of the person who made it.