In our first MA group meeting, we talked about kindness and what it means for our practice. For me it isn't just a virtue between people - it's the soil creativity grows in. Cultivating kindness toward myself is a key part of experimentation and exploration. Compassion in the studio offers softness to the parts of us that feel fearful, stuck, or uncertain.

When I'm immersed in making - whether drawing, printing, or experimenting - there are moments when the chatter of labels and expectations quietens. I notice a brief loosening of thought and identification. In that space I am simply present with the materials and the process.

I've been thinking about how often we try to understand creativity by thinking more about it. Yet the richest moments arrive when thinking steps back and attention opens out. Reality is encountered directly through presence rather than through descriptions of it.

Identification can narrow the field. When I cling to roles, opinions, or outcomes, the work constricts. Treating thought as recycled memory helps me let it pass; awareness widens when I rest before the impulse to label or conclude. In that wider field, curiosity returns.

In my own making, if I over-identify with being an artist or worry about the result, I tighten up. When I approach the work mindfully and kindly, something opens. There is more freedom, playfulness, and a sense of the work becoming a meditation - a way of being fully present rather than trying to achieve something specific.

Bringing these ideas into practice

Mindfulness, for me, is staying awake to the process as it unfolds - noticing without judging, allowing without forcing. It turns art making into an act of awareness rather than control.

Compassion as a container for vulnerability

The creative process often exposes our insecurities and fears. Compassion creates the safety needed to stay open - to accept mistakes, to pause, to begin again gently.

Loosening identification

By softening the need to define who I am or what my work should be, I create space for discovery. Letting labels fall away helps the work breathe.

Art as transcendence

When the mind settles and I lose track of time or self, art becomes a kind of transcendence - a direct experience of being, beyond thought. That is where creativity feels most alive and authentic.

Art making, mindfulness, and compassion seem to meet in the same place - in presence. For me, that is where art truly begins.