And so it is that this is the first of a few comments I’ll add today, and I’d like to thank Andy for this opportunity.

Reading this opening entry, I was reminded of my mother and her love for watercolour painting. Entering my teens, I recall her modestly showing me through her art scrap-book where she introduced me to small carefully laid out squares of colour showcasing the amazing variety of watercolour pigments… Of cubes and tubes of paint, and the carefree relaxed combinations of them, playing together to form new colours and textures on the white pages.

From mum, I learnt about the different types of paper and brushes appropriate to watercolour - and in what she described as very ‘rough’ attempts - I found a real appreciation for the beauty and simple complexity of watercolour landscapes that has stayed with me over the intervening years.

The sadness of this story is not just in my mother’s playing down of her ability. But moreso in her choice (for I believe despite circumstances she could have chosen differently) to accept the belief that life’s adult responsibilities deserved priority over such creative expression. In fact, not just deserved priority (as raising a family is an important process) but that life’s responsibilities demanded an exclusion of creativity.

I am thankful that she tried to encourage some of her love for watercolour through me, yet it is not surprising that I too only dabbled with it (and never with my mother’s natural ease), also determining that life’s other adult responsibilities were more worthy of focus than nurturing my creative instincts.

And so it is, that I count myself as one of the blessed ones - who had started down that path of unquestioned acceptance of adult focus, and found my creative instinct reawoken in my late twenties rather than further along my journey.

The only time you ever have is now!
Sam

Andy