Checking out for the year: a reflection on connection

Sixteen paintings in one year. When I look at them all together, side by side in a montage, it actually stops me. I did not realise how much I had made until I saw them like that. It feels like looking at a conversation I have been having with myself all year. A long one. A deep one. A necessary one.

What surprises me most is that everything I have made in 2025 can be held by one single word. Reconnection. Painted reconnection. Live reconnection. Self reconnection. All of it has come back to the same centre.

The year began with The Space Between Us. I wanted to explore closeness between two people. I wanted to work with dual portraits and see what happened when two figures shared the same frame. I thought I was exploring relationships between others. But I realise now that I was exploring my relationship with myself. Every painting in the series carries that tension. The longing. The gap. The closeness. The silence. The ghost of someone who was there once but not quite anymore. The portrait that looks outward but is actually looking inward. The whole series turned out to be a mirror I did not recognise at first.

Then, in the middle of the year, the Impromptu portraits began to appear. Spontaneous moments with people in my life, drawn from real presence instead of imagined ones. Quick paintings made from instinct and energy. They were still about reconnection, just a different kind. Portraits of people who orbit my life. People who come in and out. People who sit with me for a moment. These works felt light, but they still held the deeper thread. They reminded me how valuable those little moments are, and how important it is to catch them.

And now, towards the end of the year, drawing has come back into my practice. Charcoal. Life drawing. Face to face reconnection with someone sitting in front of me. A completely different experience again. Emotional in its own way. Slower. More grounded. There is something beautiful about meeting someone through a line. I forget how much I love it until I do it again. It gives something back that painting does not always give. It reconnects me to the act of looking. It reconnects me to the person. It reconnects me to myself!

When I stand back and look at everything together, it feels like one long arc. Not separate projects, not scattered ideas, but a full year of reconnecting with myself through paint, people, line, and instinct. Sixteen pieces. Some polished. Some loose. Some finished. Some intentionally unfinished. But all of them honest, and all of them part of the same journey.

It has been a brilliant year. A wild one. A full one. A year of making and thinking and learning. A year where I checked back in with who I am. Now I am ready to check out for a while, rest, and let the dust settle before I jump into new work next year.

I already feel ideas bubbling. And I already know that drawing and paint will pull me back in again. Because in the end, it is the act of doing that keeps me alive. The act of painting. The act of drawing. The act of reconnecting…

That is what this year has been.

And it feels good to say it out loud!

Enjoy the festivities all!

Em x