Boiled Down to Nothing

I have only dipped my favorite Princeton Long Round No. 12 paintbrush in water twice in the last two months.

January 2026 began and it was as if my soul went into slumber. I told a friend of mine recently that I feel “boiled down to nothing.” Every time I ask my life force why I don’t feel able to create, why I don’t feel inspired, I hear “rest.”

There is a childlike part of me that has felt very afraid to have arrived in this place. It feels dark and void of life, like sitting in nothingness. It is a state of not feeling much desire or motivation to paint or even to create. It feels unstable, unplanned, and confusing. At first as I sat here, I kept running head first into the belief that “artists don’t run out of inspiration, they don’t just stop, there is always something that wants to be created.”

The truth is, I do not feel that way right now.

Right now, there is a whisper that says you are exactly where you are meant to be, and if that space is not creating, then don’t.

In addition to being an artist, I am also a homeopathic practitioner. One of the cornerstones of homeopathic practice is saying “yes” to our suffering rather than finding ways to work against it. If I were my client, I would say “Can you tell me a little more about this experience? Can we spend a little more time with this discomfort?” So I know better than to try to force myself to do something when my life force is giving me a hard “no.” And if I feel like I need to push past it, then it’s time to ask myself where that drive is coming from.

You see throughout 2025 I felt as if I was constantly encountering facets of my creative journey that I have built into my life and my business that felt they weren’t working anymore. Once I named them, once I stood face to face with these practices, I looked down and saw they were rooted in beliefs that no longer served me. The truth is, I have been pushing myself really hard over the last few years. I do not regret anything, the hustle I have put into getting my art out there for the world to see has brought me to where I am today — I am extremely grateful to past Katie for putting in the hours and the passion to make all of that happen. But, there is a difference between motivation that comes from passion and motivation that comes from “if I don’t do this then _______ might happen.” I could see myself working from a place of trying to keep up and not from a space of true desire. True desire that comes not from what I believe the world expects of me, but of what I want from and for myself.

I believe that life is a cadence of ideas and inspiration, followed by creation and momentum, editing down, destruction, release and then, death. Then the process begins again. These phases occur at different lengths and times, some long and extensive, and some quick, like bursts. But what I had not fully experienced until now is that sometimes there is space between two phases. In my case, there was a space between release and creation. Sometimes an old way of doing things has left us before a new way materializes. For me, this has been a place filled with a lot of different emotions and I have been challenged with sitting with these feelings without distraction so as to understand myself better before jumping into something new.

Last Wednesday, January 15th, I celebrated 5 years since I committed to this creative journey as a watercolorist. Yes, that is a huge milestone. Five years of doing something just to see what would happen, five years of challenges, honors, personal milestones, more opportunities than I could count, and plenty of failures. Each year at this point in time I have felt something quite different. In numerology, the number 5 is the number of chaos and change. I chuckle to myself just typing that out. We must confront what needs to change before we can find harmony.

So I find myself in a pivot. The apex of the turn, without really knowing where the road is going next. But even though I don’t know where the map leads next, I do know that my creative spirit lives beyond this, that there are new projects and ideas that lie in wait, ready to open to me as soon as I am ready to meet them. That a new way will unfold that feels like it fuels me in ways I have only dreamed of. Even though I have not arrived there yet, I know I will.

In the meantime, I am doing some pen and charcoal pencil sketching here and there — of curious things I have found on our land out here and other somewhat random subjects — loose sketches are where my artistic journey began. I am also taking a flower essence course and am in the process of getting my practitioner’s certification in Flower Essence Therapy. I am reading a lot of books. I am spending time off social media to keep my mind and spirit less distracted and more centered. I’m taking a lot of walks via snowshoe down the frozen Stewart River. I am writing, a lot. There is plenty that is growing, that is developing, and I believe in the long run, this strange liminal space is healing me so that when that next creative idea springs forth, I’m ready to grab onto her tail and fly.