1.

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
ché la diritta via era smarrita.

In the middle of the journey of my life I was returned to myself in a dark forest, where the true way was lost.

Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura
esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte
che nel pensier rinova la paura!

Ah! it is hard to speak of that savage forest, dense and difficult, which even when recalling renews my fear.

Tant’ è amara che poco è più morte;
ma per trattar del ben ch’i’ vi trovai,
dirò de l’altre cose ch’i’ v’ho scorte.

So bitter, death is hardly more severe. But to retell the good discovered there, I'll also tell the other things I saw.

- Dante, Inferno Canto 1

2.

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.

- Mary Oliver, The Journey

3.

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was yourself.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.

- Derek Walcott, Love After Love

This photograph was taken in July 2024 at the southern end of Bruny Island, one week after I was made redundant from my job, redundant from the only true vocation I had known my entire adult life. I understood what had happened. Why it happened. But I don't think I realised what it was about to do to me. All that time, my work had shaped a large part of who I thought I was. The obvious thing was to go back home, find another job and defend the status quo.

But sitting there, I had another thought. What if I became an artist? I quickly snapped out of it and did the practical thing. I went home and started looking for a job. I started applying and interviewing for jobs. In the past, I'd always enjoyed this. New challenges excited me. This time I dreaded every application. At first, I thought it was fear. Fear of rejection, perhaps. Or fear of getting another job and being made redundant again. But it wasn't fear. It just felt wrong. Wrong for me. I overrode that feeling for over six months. Listening to it seemed like a path to family and financial ruin. It also meant giving up an identity I had spent most of my adult life building. Eventually I couldn't ignore it anymore. I stopped applying. And I finally picked up the brush for the first time in 2 decades.

I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
… I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

- T S Eliot, Four Quartets

I started painting every day. I painted with no end in mind. Nothing at all. I just painted. Maybe I was finally processing. Maybe I was healing. I don't really know. But I knew I needed to keep painting as I no longer identified with my old identity. I wanted to find out who was going to be left when the old identity was gone and more importantly who I was becoming.

I did my first watercolour demo in Sep 2025 at a local art society. After that few more art institutions opened up their doors to me. Since then, I have done over 40 events, partly just to see if I was serious about doing this for the long term. Each opportunity asked something more of me, and I tried to rise to it. I find myself perpetually trying.

Then I realised something. This was exactly what I had loved about my old work. Learning. Making things. Taking on problems I didn't yet know how to solve. Saying yes before I was ready and then doing the work required to become ready. I was back to being myself again.

The job was gone. That part of me wasn't. And I think that's what I misunderstood at first. I thought I had to become a new person. I didn't. I just had to start being who I already was, with more conviction and ease. My lifelong apprenticeship as an artist has only just begun. There is still so much I don't know. But I like that now. When I look at this photograph, I see someone who had no idea what was coming. At the time, I thought I had ended. Now the last two years make complete sense. There is faith now. I don't know what happens next. And I can't wait to find out.