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We had a spectacular 12 days in Botswana in October on a family safari… and I at the last minute brought my paints! I’m so glad I did, but I also learnt some lessons along the way…

A deep dive into all the colours on my palette - I share how to set up your palette, how to arrange your colours, what colours and brands of oil paints I use, how I make my greys, limited palettes and more.

You never know when inspiration will strike… and on this day, it was high above the clouds on our way to America…

I am obsessed. When the clouds start rolling in, when they turn pink as the sun starts to set, as they flow into and over crevices in the rocks… I am mesmerised. And I feel an urgent need to paint them… knowing full well the clouds are moving so fast, the moment I just observed (and fell in love with) will never be repeated… ever…

I had a powerful conversation with my close friend Denise tonight. Denise completed the three-year FAA program (graduating last June) and was my first friend at FAA. I asked Denise for advice about how to approach the third (and final) year of the painting program. I begin the third year in a week. I have been feeling a lot of fear, trepidation and anxiety (yes, anxiety! Even though I’m no longer in a corporate job!!) about the start of this new school year.

It’s been a tough few weeks. I have received hard critiques. Critiques that made me feel like I wasn’t good enough to be at this school, not good enough to be an artist, that I’d never be able to do “it”.

This was a tough week for me. Week 5 of an 11 week trimester. Half way through the trimester, half way through the academic year. I think a lot of us students had big weeks – and by big I mean big breakthroughs, big jumps in our understanding, big jumps in our ability to represent that understanding visually!

My big learnings began with the head instructor for the second year Painting program, Daniela Astone, giving me a very strong critique.

When I think about my time in Florence, I can imagine remembering swathes of time spent talking. Sharing. Connecting. Speaking about the deep things. There are so many opportunities for these conversations to happen.

I don’t even know how to begin capturing the themes! I find myself desperately trying to take notes – on my iPhone, in notebooks, mentally (although keeping mental notes feels so futile as trying to grasp so many new ideas, books, concepts, names, means as soon as I try commit one to memory, another one butts in and pushes the last thought out of the way!).

Back in 2016, when I was living and working in Singapore, I attended a mentoring session for young female professionals. The guest speaker was Joerg Kuehn, a motivational speaker and executive coach who that night shared the story with us about how he had changed his life after walking 800km on the ancient Spanish pilgrimage route from the border of France and Spain to the north western Spanish town of Santiago.

I had written down “Walk the Camino de Santiago” on my bucket list some years before. It was an idea waiting patiently for a catalyst. And Joerg was it.

Tonight is the 2 year anniversary of the first time I came to Florence, Italy. The start of when everything changed. I have been meaning to write a blog about my experience in Florence, as a full time art student after leaving my corporate job and “conventional” life, ever since I did just that – leave it! But tonight is the first time I’m writing anything formal. I have been writing a journal, to try and hold onto the experience that I know is so unique and powerful – as Per Elof, one of my teachers, said tonight, no one can go through an experience like this and not change.

So tonight I will start to capture some of what this experience feels like. Let’s start with dinner…