On Time Escaping | Studio Notes

17. New Moon - December 2025

I am most anxious about never having enough time to create and become who I want to be in the process. I have a strong Saturnian temperament paired with a leonine desire to express, create, and, you know, shine. I am prone to always feeling that I have never done enough.

Since this is the last Studio Notes of the year, I was going to do a retrospective of my creative output since January. But as I scroll through the photos on my phone, I realize that I don’t have tons to share. Art takes time, and my focus has been elsewhere.

The whole point of Studio Notes was to share glimpses of my studio practice, but the irony is that I spent so much time writing these that I didn’t have much time for a studio practice. These newsletters were meant to be raw and unedited, but it’s not how I operate. If you’ve seen my art, then you know I’m a bit of a perfectionist.

It started like this: “Studio Notes is an intentional practice to undo this paralyzing concern for perfection and be witnessed through the various phases of creation.”

But somewhere along the way, the whole endeavour turned into longer and longer essays, until my practice became a kind of background prop. But I remain loyal to the daemon, the spark, trusting whatever slimy new thing insists on sliding out of the metaphorical birth canal, such as my new essay series, A Magical Theory of Art.

This is one of the essays I enjoyed writing the most this past year.

Managing my time and creative energy alongside a day job—and then adding a bi-monthly Substack to the mix—while maintaining a social life and still making time to go inward, to meditate, to read and study, to philosophize, to dance and move my body, to be in nature, to rest, and even to do nothing, was exhausting at times.

Therefore, Studio Notes will no longer be essays, but short notes and updates about my practice and related offerings, as it should be. I will continue writing essays, but will publish only on the full moon, giving myself a full cycle to bring them to fruition. Maybe then, I can finally catch my breath.

But I’ve really enjoyed finding my voice on this platform and learning to give language to my practice, and to the ideas that inform it, through essays like the one below—an essay that became my first artist talk, exploring three recurring archetypes in my work: the Femme Fatale, the Witch, and the Cyborg.

As for my art practice, I’m calling in smaller things: sketches, collages, paintings, studies—small, manageable works I can churn out when the mood strikes. After finishing The Encounter, my spooky alien painting from earlier this fall, which I worked on for over three months, I felt the need to revive my sketchbook practice. As much as I love having a painting to chip away at after work, focusing on the same thing for months on end can sometimes begin to feel stagnant, or like a chore even. And that’s not what art is for.

I’ll end this year in review with a few small works and sketches, such as this recent exploration of Hekate based on invocations found in the Greek Magical Papyri.

I’ve also been into making these spontaneous collages/drawings.

Thank you for reading my work and following me on this new creative journey. In a digital space where everything and everyone competes for our attention, it means a lot that you’re here <3