Not on the side

All through 2025

people asked,

How’s the art going?

And I would smile and say,“Oh, it’s a bit on the side this year.”

Because we had moved house

Rooms full of boxes and echoing with to-do lists.

I had to work more hours.

Everything left given to family

Life was full and I thought there was no space left.

On the side, I said,as if art were a coat

hung patiently behind the door,

waiting for a quieter season.

But what I meant

(though I didn’t quite realise it)

was that it wasn’t being shared with the world.

It wasn’t posted or promoted,

wasn’t arranged into neat announcements.

It wasn’t being steered outward

towards attention or applause

wasn’t arranged for attention.

It was simply being lived.

There were pens always to hand,

quiet drawings made while waiting in the car

or at the poolside

or in the margins of long meetings

where only listening was required

doodles and patterns unfolding,

buildings and street scenes.

The rhythm of line helping me think,

helping me remember.

There were costumes

Stitched and shaped in our new home,

a great rolling city imagined in cloth and thread.

Birthday cakes crowned with

hand-crafted comic-book characters,

bunny rabbits,leaves and tree trunks

rising in sugar and sponge.

There was homework help

that looked suspiciously like studio practice

creative videos storyboarded and filmed,

clay sculptures pressed into being,

cardboard models engineered

with tape and hope and patience.

There were murals being painted

on the walls of new bedrooms

one constellations scattered across a galaxy,

one a mindful forest of tall green trunks.

There was a summer abroad,

captured in ink and watercolour:

café tables, ferry queues,

rustic farmhouse walls,

drawn while waiting for food to arrive.

A sketchbook always in my bag,

its spine softening with use.

Sketchbooks for the children too

– heads bent together.

There were photographs too

(not the posed ones,

not the smiles summoned on request)

but the quiet in-between moments,

when the light fell just right

kept not for sharing

but simply because I saw them.

There were life drawing classes

– charcoal on fingers,

the hush of concentration,

the human form rediscovered

again and again.

There were late evenings

learning the language of reach,

quietly gathering tools

for a future version of the work

– how messages travel,

how audiences gather,

how to build quiet bridges

between making and being seen.

There were towering backdrops:

sets designed and scenery painted

for a local pantomime

– brush loaded, arm aching –

turreted castles, gas-lit streets, hearth-warmed kitchens,

laughter echoing in the hall,

whole worlds rising from plywood

under bright rehearsal lights.

So when I said

it was on the side,

what I meant was

it wasn’t on display.

But art was there

in ferry queues and flour-dusted kitchens,

in the margins of meetings,

in forest murals and fabric cities,

in charcoal studios and homework clay

in community spirit.

It wasn’t on the side at all.

It was woven

through everything.