"Earth, 114 million years ago, one morning just after sunrise: the first flower ever to appear on the planet opens up to receive the rays of the sun. Seeing beauty in a flower could awaken humans, however briefly, to the beauty that is an essential part of their own innermost being, their true nature. The first recognition of beauty was one of the most significant events in the evolution of human consciousness." — Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

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I cut up my whole past to make flowers.

Every painting, drawing and print I had made since childhood — torn into fragments, reassembled into blooms. Each collage made in ceremony: chanting, singing, praying, giving thanks. Meditating over every piece. I was so full of gratitude — for love found after seventeen years of being single, for two beautiful children, for a garden wedding, for finally coming home to myself — that it poured into every fragment I touched.

The series is called In Full Bloom.  My Soul,  My Love,  My Life and  My Passion — yellow, pink, green, orange. Shown at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. Soul in Full Bloom sold before the doors opened.

I spent thirty years in schools building curricula around arts and wellbeing — holding space for children who needed somewhere to express creatively what they couldn't say. I knew what that felt like from the inside. I had been one of those children. What I took into every classroom were tools I'd found on my own long journey of healing, becoming, allowing accepting .... softening— the slow alchemy of changing states, of moving from shadow into something luminous.

That thread runs through everything I make. The small collage series You Don't Need Permission to Feel is about exactly that — the quiet revolution of allowing yourself to feel what you actually feel, without apology, without explanation.

You don't need permission. You never did.