surrender

A Creative Sketchbook, Dec 2025

| Sheree
My creative sketchbook
My creative sketchbook rules

I’m not sure how my creative sketchbook differs from my visual journal. Intention maybe.

Perhaps, I think , I’m attempting to develop my art practice within a designated space. A study maybe.

I haven’t really been in the thick of my art making practice since the preparation for my Baltic exhibition back in 2022-3.

This was quickly followed with the writings and (re)drafts of Darkling, my poetry/hybrid collection published in October 2024.

After this 2025 has been a period of extended rest and refusal.

But something has been niggling me. The desire to create with paint again. the desire to play without expectations and outcomes/ products.

I’ve just scratched the itch through scrolling through Pinterest. Adding another abstract or landscape painting to a board that I’ll probably not look at again.

But it satisfied this niggling feeling. Until it didn’t.

It was going back into the classroom. Completing a few days of supply that pushed me over the edge.

The time I gave away for money. The time I’d lost pursuing my own pursuits. And realising that I wasn’t pursuing all the pursuits I wanted to pursue in the time I had/have.

So out came a creative sketchbook, inspired by the 30 days sketchbook challenge created by Cheryl Taves over at Insight Creative.

This is as much as I’m willing to share for now about the challenge, my creative sketchbook, processes and insights.

One of my rules is that it’s just for my eyes only. I want to see how this rule changes my practice. I want to create without fear but with curiosity. I want to give myself all the freedom without worrying about what others will think or say or comment on.

It’s not like I’m hanging on other people’s responses and reactions but I have gotten into a habit of just sharing anything and everything on my blog and I’m curious to see what happens when I keep things to myself.

Just for my eyes, heart, and soul only.

So far I’m enjoying the process of the challenge and I’m reflecting and paying attention to what makes my heart sing, what’s my creative vocabulary, what pushes my energies.

Do doubt whatever I explore within my creative sketchbook will be showing up in everything that I create. In everything who I {BE}. For sure.

Farewell 2022

| Sheree

2022 has been a challenging, unpredictable and painful year in so many ways. A year marked by illness after illness, I’d be justified in feeling the year was a series of starts and stops, stood and starts.

But, I’ve also managed to enjoy some wonderful experiences along the way, especially towards the back end of the year which I spent planning and organising in the first half of the year, while fighting illness after illness. There’s something to be said about dreaming on paper and best laid plans and all that.

2022 was the year of letting go and getting better. I have to believe this to move forward.

My word for 2022 was ‘open’. I know now that I needed this word and focus as a stepping stone, as necessary piece in the process of getting to where I am today, on the eve of 2023. Remaining open, percolating in the background of my attitudes, behaviours and being, meant that I was moving in the right direction even if it has been difficult at times to remain open and honest and trusting.

The pulling away from certain people and situations has been necessary. The release bringing about an end which can also be treated as a new beginning.

I feel a lot has changed about me this year, the most important one being my deepening understanding about this healing journey I’m on. In order to heal, I need to go through the necessary grieving, allowing myself to feel all the feels without the guilt or judgement or trying to hurry the process along. I’m learning.

I know I’m also quicker and more able to stand up for myself now. I choose me more times than not these days and this is a welcoming change and practice. It happens, this choosing of myself, not without guilt and doubts and feelings of uncomfortableness but I write it out.

My creativity, whether that be pen to page, paint to paper, or cut and stick, supports me on this journey for which I am grateful. These conversations I have with myself through the creative process are invaluable being life saving and supportive.

As I see in the new year, new priorities are surfacing. Such as healing, going even more slow and resting. Rest is resistance even as I waste time and energy resisting these changes. But I’m a work in progress, finding non-traditional ways to {BE}, heal and push against the system.

I heard someone recently describe themselves as the matriarch of healing in their lineage. Being the first person in their family who is doing the necessary work to heal themselves as well as for those who came before them and who will come after them. I take this title on for myself and the journey and task I’m on.

I will explore this healing journey further as I move slowly into 2023. Choosing me. No longer playing small, planning on becoming large.

The Releasing

| Sheree

This space is to remember the losses, the challenges and struggles of 2022. This is the space to let go and surrender to what has gone, goodbye and what is here now.

The releasing is a practice, a continuing practice, but I have to start somewhere.

2022 saw me release my fantasy of marriage. Holding onto the dreams and hopes of that relationship. The certainty of marriage and that promises of growing old with someone I loved; I let go of. What is the point of pining after something that was never going to happen and missing out on the life I have now? The life I’m creating for myself, day by day, money by moment.

I’m letting go of my need for control. Micro-managing everybody and every situation is tiring and no longer needed. I’m ready to embrace the unknown.

Lensa AI

I release my need and desire for love from others, love from someone else because I know the love I need has to come from myself, first and foremost.

And I release all those secrets and lies that I’ve been holding onto as a means of control and as a means of protection. I lay down my guard, opening as I am ready to listen and learn.

Art Journal Play

| Sheree

When things get overwhelming, I take to colour. I think this is the reason I love Autumn so much. The myriad of colours; crimson, pumpkin, golden and umber. See what I did there? I elevated my vocabulary as sometimes I can be lazy and just use the obvious.

Anyhow. Back to the colour fields. Playing with colour fills my pot. Shifts my energy. And makes me happy. A simple task but well worth the effort.

Lately, I’ve started new journals. Square journals. Altered books. Notebooks. Any blank page I can fill with colour I will. I share some of the results here to inspire you to play. To let go and just lose yourself in the process. Forget the result. Forget perfection. And surrender to the joy of play.

Things I Know About Starting Over

| Sheree

Work in Progress

In 2015, when the shit hit the fan, I had to change. My whole life was in tatters and I had to find a way to live again. But live on my own terms. Live true to my soul.

For decades I’d been on the production trail. Do do do. Produce produce produce. Because I’d eventually I’d get to the promised land. I’d be successful, famous and accepted.

What I know now from having to start over is that there is no end point. There’s only the journey. I’m in a constant state of becoming. Becoming a better version of myself. But I will never be complete or perfect because that state just doesn’t exist. It’s a fallacy we’re fed to keep us keeping on. The desire or promise keeps us working with our heads down, selling out our souls for very little rewards. We think we are living the life we want to live but really, we’re living the life ‘they’ want us to live. The system, that is.

Now, I’m happy with less. Happy to work small. Happy with little ripples I create because I know in my heart that this is the authentic me at work. I know now, what I do, I do from the heart. I do in service to others with no expectations or need for anything in return. Living my life on my terms is my reward. And that’s enough. I’m enough just being me.

ten:three

| Sheree

1. Re-entry into my everyday after being away is harsh.
2. The sun glows low.
3. We walk the shore alone and smell the waves.
4. My everyday life is full of kinks.
5. The terns dance within the foam.
6. Strong black coffee steams.
7. Luther Vandross ‘Searching’ on the radio.
8. Emails plying up as is the washing.
9. Box set bingeing late into the night.
10. Not ready to start it all again tomorrow.