Listening to what lies beneath

Hi there

Wow. Coming back wasn’t quite as easy as I thought it would be.

I had this lovely picture in my head: I’d come home, sleep for a week, eat lots of nice food, catch up on my reading, and then, full of energy, walk straight into the studio and start putting all those paintings that had been brewing in my head onto primed boards.

Well… how wrong was I!

Instead, it felt as though the tiredness of the entire world had suddenly landed on my shoulders. There were tears, palpitations, a feeling of being completely stuck, and absolutely no idea where to start.

So I did what I probably should have done in the first place.

I slowed down.

I told myself: “Isabelle, you know this process. You know what happens when you don’t listen. So this time, let’s take it easy.”

I packed my ‘wild landscape painting tools’ (See, I found the perfect term instead of using the scary ‘sketching’ word) and headed off to explore some of the places I’d been longing to visit but hadn’t had the chance to.

I soaked up the sunshine, spent time among trees and landscapes, slept, rested, and did a little sketching along the way.

Nothing particularly spectacular happened. And perhaps that was exactly what I needed.

I started intentionally moving slower, spending more time in silence, and simply observing.

Nature is rather good at teaching you this, especially at this time of year, when so much is happening underground.

Mushrooms are appearing everywhere. At first glance, they seem like little independent worlds, each one emerging from the earth on its own.

But beneath the surface, there is an extraordinary network connecting them. Mycelium, spreading quietly through the soil, linking roots, trees and other living organisms.

An entire world at work, mostly invisible to us.

I find something rather beautiful about that.

There is so much happening that we don’t see. Growth doesn’t always happen where we can observe it.

Sometimes, the most important work is taking place beneath the surface, in the dark, without any obvious signs of progress.

And then there is the light.

Funny how differently you begin to see the world when you stop rushing. The way light shifts across a room, touches a wall, catches the edge of a leaf or suddenly transforms an ordinary object into something extraordinary.

One early morning the sunlight fell onto a vas of oak yellow leaves. Nothing special, really. Just leaves, a vase and the sunlight. And yet, for a moment, everything seemed alive.

Light everywhere, like dripping gold in the middle of my kitchen. Such beauty in the ordinary.

I’ve found myself paying much more attention to these little moments. Not just looking at things, but noticing how light makes them visible, how it changes their presence, how it reveals details that might otherwise go unnoticed.

Perhaps there is something here that I haven’t quite understood yet. Something growing, connecting, taking shape. I don’t know what it is, and I’m not in a hurry to find out.

But it feels right.

Because somewhere in all that slowness, something started to shift.

I began to realise that a different part of me was emerging.

A new direction, perhaps, or simply something that had been there for a while, quietly waiting for some space to come through.

And it made me think about something I often talk about in my workshops and retreats: those things that lie beneath the surface of our work.

The recurring shapes, the ideas we keep circling back to, the things we are drawn towards without quite understanding why. Those little clues that tell us something is happening, even when we can’t quite put our finger on it.

How often do we give ourselves enough time to notice them? To stop producing, stop planning, stop trying to figure everything out, and simply listen?

It is something I have to remind myself to do as much as anyone else!

And perhaps this is why an idea I’ve been carrying around for quite some time finally found its way into the light.

I’ve been talking about it for over a year, thinking about it, reshaping it, and waiting for the right moment to bring it together. Life, of course, had other plans, and it kept being pushed aside.

But now I’m finally ready to share it.

UNDERCURRENT– a six-month online mentorship for a very small group of five artists.

that’s it. It is that simple.

It is about slowing down, looking more closely at your practice, recognising the threads that run through your work and discovering what might be waiting to emerge.

Like the mycelium beneath the forest floor, our creative practice is often made up of connections we don’t immediately recognise. Ideas, gestures, marks, memories and recurring themes quietly weaving their way through our work. Sometimes we need to step back and look beneath the surface to begin to see the bigger picture.

UNDERCURRENT is an invitation to do just that.

Not about finding the right style or being told what to paint. But about having the time, space and support to go a little deeper, follow those threads and see where they might lead.

I’m rather excited about this one. It feels like something I’ve wanted to create for a long time, and I’m very proud to finally see it taking shape.

The waiting list is now open, and the first group will begin in January.

If something in your own practice feels as though it’s shifting, or if you’ve been sensing that there is more beneath the surface waiting to be explored, I’d love you to find out more.

Join the waiting list to receive an invitation and be among the first to hear about the programme before public enrolment opens on 21 November.

Leave me a message and I’ll send you an invitation with all the details.

Here’s to slowing down, paying attention, and trusting that not everything needs to be visible to be growing.

Sometimes, the most interesting things are happening beneath the surface.

I look forward to seeing where they take us.

Isabelle