Since I was a child I would always create things. Not in the way most painters do - through painting and drawing - but through crafting. Crocheting, knitting, carving, jewellery making. Making things with my hands was how I made sense of the world.

Then life took over. HR, corporate, career. One by one the creative pursuits fell away, and slowly, without noticing, I became someone else. Years in corporate taught me to close off, not trust, not feel, not ask. I was lonely on the inside, with a life that looked fine on the outside.

I didn't realise how much I'd lost until one day during the pandemic, when it all got a little too much, I picked up brushes and watercolours. And everything shifted. There was no turning back.

For years I painted to calm myself. To find peace after work. To recover. Missing my family, I would try to paint them - to capture moments and feelings in a way a camera never could. I was already learning, without knowing it, that paint holds something photographs don't. It holds presence.

Then came the news that changed everything.

On my birthday I spent the day and night with my mum at the hospital. Cerebellar stroke. Her recovery took time, and she will never be quite the same - not physically, not mentally. Moments and memories, quietly wiped away.

Losing someone while they are still here is its own kind of grief. But it gave me the clearest sense of purpose I have ever had.

Now I have left corporate behind. Moved to a new place, new surroundings - calm landscapes, space to reflect, to journal, to notice. I am training to become a better figurative artist. Someone who sees more. Micro expressions most people walk past. The quality of light on a face in a particular moment. The presence of a person, not just their features.

Because presence is what I want to capture. Not a plain record, or copy. The feeling of someone being there - translated into paint by a human hand, led by heart and experience. Something that will become an heirloom. A record for families. A memory that won't fade.

My mum losing her memories made me understand, more deeply than anything else, why this matters.

I don't know yet who I'll become on the other side of this. But I know that painting people and moments is the closest I have ever felt to truly seeing someone and some things.

That is what I am here to do - help myself and others hold onto what matters, before it is gone. To record memories of people and places, in paint, for the generations to come.