blooming in the void.
artist is a title I did not feel worthy of claiming for a long time.
Artist is a title I did not feel worthy of claiming for a long time.
Forever an observer, taking in the world and compelled to capture the details I noticed, photographer felt more accurate. Objective. To the point.
I was never drawn to constructing elaborate scenes in a studio. I preferred being outdoors and didn’t feel particularly skilled at styling.
In fact, I usually found myself looking through any added elements, magnetised by what lay beneath, inside, beyond.
This made Nature the perfect subject. Whether the landscape of a windswept cove or woman, here vibrated life and something vital, something other.
To me, She was the artist. I was just there, magic box in hand, playing at distilling the ephemeral.
Then, as time passed, the title Photographer took on a new weight: that of profession. I was in my early 20s, I needed income, and I needed to justify what I was “doing” with my life.
I watched as my peers and girls I had photographed for fun landed big money and big opportunities, careers catapulted by a booming online platform and what seemed like a continuous output of polished content.
I started to feel like a piece of flotsam left in the wake of a cargo ship. Like I’d somehow missed the boat whilst I was faffing about in the sun with my little camera.
If I wanted to be a real Photographer, I had to be successful enough to earn a living. And I felt like I was running out of time to prove to myself I was good enough for that.
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Here are the CliffsNotes: I grew a following, sort of. I earned money, sort of. I navigated the glorious mess of growing up—the self-doubt, the flux of identity—and I think that, as a human, I did alright.
But as a Photographer, I was suspended in a state of contraction. Frustrated with myself because I—eldest-daughter-Virgo I—was failing.
I had no knack for business. Jobs were sporadic, not helped by the traveling I prioritised. I could not for the life of me pigeonhole into one niche or do the same thing every day.
What I loved to shoot most had no client or paycheck behind it. In fact, numerous agencies told me to change my style if I was serious about “making it”.
Worst of all, I was perpetually dissatisfied with my own work. More and more discouraged—rather than inspired—by a tidal wave of online talent that seemed to have it all figured out.
The harder I tried, the more disconnected I felt.
So, I stuck to what came easily. Albeit now in different settings, I was still documenting, and I was damn good at it. Career-wise, things were alright. But over time, a part of me began to wilt.
Caught in the juggling act between work and life, my magic box became just a camera. A bulky tool. Something I put down at the end of a shift and rarely reached for otherwise.
And then, just as I was beginning to find a kind of stability there, something unprecedented happened—
The world shut down.
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Now, I say this with sensitivity to the collective trauma of that strange period, but the Lockdown Era rearranged my life in a way I will forever be grateful for.
Let me explain.
Overnight, it was out of my hands. Offices closed. Events were cancelled. The great global machine ground to a screeching halt, and everything I had in the pipeline vanished in the blink of an eye.
Left in a fortunate position—no mortgage, no kids to support, no brick-and-mortar business to keep afloat, and on government subsidies for the first time—I stopped.
Global situation aside, my day-to-day became slow and inward-focused.
With work no longer an option and money no longer a worry, I allowed myself to do “nothing”. Guilt-free.
My jaw unclenched. My nerves settled. Knots of near-permanent anxiety I’d thought were just me began to unwind.
The incessant voice that gnawed at the back of my mind—do more, try harder, be more—just… faded away.
In its place was s p a c e.
So, what came next?
Not much. But somehow, everything.
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I rested. I spent more time in nature. I explored new reaches of my psyche and learned to meditate in a way that felt right for me. I started reading fantasy novels again.
Then, by some cosmic alignment, I left Sydney and moved to a quiet stretch of acreage in the Northern Rivers. As my surroundings expanded, so did my inner world, and I discovered that the void of being was fertile.
My creativity began to bloom—a small, curious thing poking its whiskers out of a burrow after a long sleep.
For the first time in ages, I was reaching for a camera simply because I felt like it. Usually just my phone—light, easy, always on me. No pressure. Just joy.
I gave my digital spaces a spring clean. I was scrolling Tumblr again, curating moods on Spotify, and delighting in the way my brain would tingle when I found the perfect song to match a feeling or photo.
I transformed my house into a magic, glowing portal, with swirling galaxies projected onto the ceiling and flickering candle-cast shadows. Sunset gradients and electric blues beaming out of that old Queenslander’s windows, probably looking like a UFO landing site to the cows on the neighbouring hill.
I pocketed smooth stones at the beach to line my windowsills, swam naked in the Ti Tree lake, and brought back strange, knobbly vegetables from the farmer’s market just to know how they tasted.
I lost myself in books, research, rediscovering my love for learning when curiosity leads the way. I laid in my hammock at dusk, watching fairyfloss clouds give way to stars, my mind stretching past them, out into the cosmos.
And, every so often, I would write. Just for me.
I wasn’t producing anything of use, but I felt lit up.
With permission to do nothing, to achieve nothing, sparks of inspiration ignited and I wanted to chase and catch and distill them all. To try things. Taste things. Feel things. Make things.
For the fun of it. Like it was, at the start.
It felt like coming home.
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Fast forward a few years (and more than a few lessons) and you find me sat in a small mountain town in the Canadian Rockies. It’s -17˚C outside and I’m in a strange in-between, contemplating cycles. Transitions.
Four years off hormonal contraception, I now feel how much I change week to week. The shifts in my body, my energy, my mood. How much better life flows when I surrender to it.
It’s easy to feel worthy and unstoppable in the heat of summer, when I wake up frisky, estrogen-high and effervescent, to-do list conquered by noon.
But in the luteal bog? When everything aches and all I want is to burrito myself in blankets and be held—that’s when I need to remember I’m not lazy or broken. It’s just my winter rolling in.
My creativity has its seasons too. Some days, a dizzying rush of ideas and deep focus. Others, brain fog and a strong urge to dissociate.
And despite the years of knowing this, whenever the wheel turns and things slow down, that eldest-daughter Virgo-Swiss control freak in me still has a meltdown because—despite her valiant efforts—she isn’t built for nonstop efficiency.
Psst. My sweet, sweet darling… Productivity isn’t solely measured by what is seen.
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Nature has a funny way of holding up a mirror.
Through fall, I’ve watched birch trees ignite into flaming torches, lose half their plumage in a gust of wind, then stand stark and quiet, ghostly trunks bare in first snowfall.
The ground is now hidden beneath an icy crust, flowers buried. I can’t even remember where the grass used to be.
Not once have I condemned them all for their laziness.
Nor do I declare a plant dead just because its foliage is out of sight.
I know that there, beneath the snow, a great network of roots remains. Resting. Gathering energy. So that when spring returns, they can send up shoots and bulbs and nectar-filled fruits, exploding back to life.
Like the perennials under their white blankets, I’ve come to understand that dormancy is not stagnation. My rest isn’t halting my growth—it’s a vital part of it.
I am not a machine. I’m not interested in running at maximum output until I burn out and break down, replaced by a newer model built to outperform me.
I am Nature.
I need the silence of winter just as I need the warmth of the sun.
A chance to rest and contemplate and integrate, giving the unseen the time it needs to weave together all that I am becoming, and all that I may, in turn, create.
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The void is neither empty nor full. It isn’t dark—it’s simply an absence of light.
A space so vast it hums with the infinite potential of what might be born from it.
That’s actually how it feels when I’m creating.
When I’m deep in a flow state, shooting, writing, I’m not really there.
My hands are doing the thing—I’ll notice myself typing, pressing the shutter—but I’m not planning my next move or efforting.
It sort of… falls into place. Like a gift from elsewhere, if I just get out of the way.
That’s why I’ll often wrap a shoot without fully knowing what I’ve captured, beyond a few key frames that made me giddy as they snapped through the viewfinder. (I’ve been doing it for long enough that, by now, I’ve learned to trust the process.)
I am not the source; I am the instrument.
The hollow bone. The in-between.
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I used to think being an artist meant mastering a medium so proficiently that the world would look at your paintings or sculptures or whatever you’d produced and agree: Yes, that is Art.
Tangible output + external validation + financial success(?) = worthy. Something like that.
Now, I see it differently.
Art isn’t something you do. It’s a way of being.
It’s flowing through life with an open heart and a curious mind. Daring to explore the unknown and being transformed by what you find.
The artist is a channel for something bigger.
They venture into the unseen, beneath the snow, past the roots, down to the depths where magic stirs. And there, they have the chance to touch something infinite.
A force that births galaxies, crumbles mountains to dust, and breathes souls into existence. The no-thing that is everything.
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So, where does that leave me?
I’m unemployed, in a foreign country, with my heavy bag of camera gear mostly gathering dust in the cupboard.
By conventional standards, this has been the least productive, most rogue stretch of my career.
Do I still qualify as a Photographer? I’m not sure.
But here’s what I do know:
I feel creative. And despite the general mess and perceived lack one might judge from the outside—
I. Am. Thriving.
Looking back at this past year, I see a multifaceted life, rich with intention and feeling and magic in ways no metric could measure.
My phone is full of memories and scribbled notes. My rock collection is growing. I spend much of my time alone, and yet I feel strangely connected.
I follow curiosity and joy like a compass, learning to welcome the unknown in one continuous trust-fall.
…Maybe I am an artist, after all. Not because of what I’ve produced or earned, but because of how I choose to move through the world.
Maybe everyone is an artist—until we’re told to stop wasting time because rent is due.
We create not because we must, but because we are.
Again and again—with courage—we descend into the quiet womb of creation. Rest there long enough to hear whispers from the ether and gather tender seeds of inspiration.
Then, with devotion, we carry them back with us. Up, up, up, into the light.
And what fun it is, how lucky we are.
To witness the unfurling—
Fractals and flowers, blooming in the void.
Also amazing!