Creating A World of Our Own

In a time when the outside world can feel heavy, chaotic, and unfamiliar, I consider myself incredibly fortunate to have a place to turn inward. Not just into my studio, but into a kind of sanctuary.

Don’t get me wrong, I still walk into my workspace each morning knowing the bills don’t care about my emotional state or the state of the world. I paint because it’s what I do, but also because I need to. And yet, I often wonder… is it enough? Is what I offer the world — through colour, shape, story — actually making a difference?

Art has always been the place I go to process. It’s where I figure things out, feel my way through the world, and make peace with what I can't control. Every brushstroke carries something I’m working through, often before I even realise it.

Over the past few years, I’ve felt a kind of quiet grief building. I know I’m not alone in that. It’s the grief that comes with watching loved ones age, the soft loss of old dreams we held for ourselves or our children, and the crumbling of belief systems. Like the idea that good things always come to good people, or that everything will eventually work out.

My word for 2025 was flow. I chose it back in January, a time that feels both like yesterday and a lifetime ago. I chose it thinking I was calling in ease, abundance, creativity and I suppose I was. But what I didn’t anticipate was that flow would show up as surrender. It became about learning to ride the waves of life, not fight them. About letting go of the hustle and leaning into trust, even when things felt far from easy.

This year has tested that trust. There’s no manual for navigating uncertain times. No magic formula that will make it all feel okay. All I can do is come back to my mindset, tend to my energy, and keep showing up with as much hope as I can hold.

So, how did A World of Our Own come to life? It began with a blank canvas and the question:

How can I possibly create something that feels worthwhile right now?

But I kept going, even with the doubt. I painted from a desire to lift the energy, even just a little. To share love in a tangible, visual way.

This collection comes from the hope that if we each nurture our own corner of joy — through kindness, colour, stillness, connection — maybe we raise the collective energy too. Maybe we make the world, bit by bit, into a place we’d love to call our own.

These paintings are my offering to that hope.They represent the small wonders of everyday life. The ones that catch you off guard and make you pause.

The perfect coffee moment

Lemons growing freely in the garden

The pink of a winter flower

The sky turning lavender at sunset

The moon lighting the back garden while your dog heads out for one last wee

The hug of a favourite sweatshirt pulled on at the end of a long day.

This series is about creating beauty where we can. It’s about choosing joy on purpose. It’s about taking what we can control — our homes, our pace, the way we spend our days — and making those things matter.

A World of Our Own is a quiet rebellion against the noise.

A gentle dream of something softer, brighter, more beautiful.

These works are little pockets of that imagined world.

Places where things make sense again.

Where beauty leads.

Where there’s space to breathe.

Because sometimes, when the world doesn’t look how we hoped it would,

we paint a new one.

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The first release of A World of Our Own is now out in the world. Two larger paintings have just arrived at my Sydney gallery, and two smaller works are now available at Bungalow Trading in Victoria.

More pieces from the series will be shown with Manyung Galleries at the Affordable Art Fair in Melbourne later this month, and again as part of their Spring Fever Exhibition this September.

I may also release an exclusive studio drop for those on my mailing list — so if you’d like early access to upcoming pieces, I’d love for you to follow along there. Sign Up here