The mornings have been getting colder. I notice it first in the quality of light that filters through the studio windows—softer, more amber, carrying with it the weight of autumn. It's in these quiet hours, before the city fully wakes, that I find myself most present with the work.
For the past six months, I've been preparing for what feels like the most intimate exhibition I've ever created. This collection is different. Where my previous work explored the grand gestures of connection—embraces, kisses, intertwined hands—these new pieces focus on the spaces between.
The moment just before touch. The quiet after a conversation ends. The way light falls across an empty chair where someone was sitting moments ago.
The Silence Between
I've always been drawn to intimacy, but lately I've been thinking about absence as its own form of presence. How the ghost of someone can fill a room more completely than their physical body ever could. How memory lingers in corners and doorways.
Early sketches and botanical studies for the collection
The pieces I'm most proud of in this collection are the ones that took the longest to resolve. There's one in particular that I reworked seven times. Each version was technically proficient, but something was missing. It wasn't until I stopped trying to fill the space and instead learned to trust the emptiness that the piece finally breathed.
Materials and Process
For this series, I returned to my roots with pen and ink on paper. There's something about the permanence of ink that feels right for this work—every mark is a commitment, every line a conversation with the page that cannot be undone.
I've been working primarily with sepia and warm gray inks, occasionally introducing soft washes of watercolor in muted pinks and ochres. The palette is deliberately restrained. I want the viewer to lean in, to spend time with each piece, to discover the layers slowly.
“The work has always possessed a rare quality of emotional honesty, but this new series represents a profound evolution. She's not just drawing what she sees—she's drawing what she feels in the spaces between seeing.”— Art Curator
My botanical studies have become more prominent in this work. Dried flowers pressed between the pages of old books, delicate fern fronds, the skeletal architecture of winter branches—these organic elements frame the human moments, reminding us that we are always part of larger cycles of growth and decay, presence and absence.
My workspace has become a collection of pressed flowers, vintage papers, and countless ink tests
What's Next
I'm also working on a limited edition print series that will be available exclusively through my shop. These won't be reproductions of the exhibition pieces, but rather new works created specifically for the print medium—smaller, more intimate studies that explore similar themes.
For now, though, I'm trying to stay present with these final weeks of preparation. There's a bittersweet quality to finishing a body of work—like saying goodbye to companions who have lived with you for months. Soon they'll belong to the world, to the people who connect with them. But for now, they're still mine, still speaking to me in the quiet of the studio.
Until then, I'll be here in the studio, drawing shadows and listening to the silence between.
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