Year of the stop.

The decline of a slippery slope - a halt at the bottom of the valley. Looking up at the new mountain to conquer, and deciding to rest in the in-between of you yesterday and you tomorrow.

2023 was my year of the stop - the rest.

My work explores rest a lot. Women of leisure and luxury, women of vanity and intimate self-awareness, women of knowing and confidence in knowing, women of fun, women of vibrancy and women of colour.

I observed these themes I draw from and the routine around them, taking a picture of women sitting while I was standing. Setting up the camera to take a reference of me resting and then getting up to go work, to labour of it.

Somewhere in the momentum of ascent and descent, the motion was automated, by a certain will I can’t describe. And looking around while I was uncontrollably rolling down the descent towards burnout, I realised I had forgotten the mountain behind me.

And on the painful landing, I didn’t have the strength to climb another mountain, so there I sat, in the valley, and made it a home.

Valleys are some of my favourite landscape features, since learning about them in Grade 11 geography. It is where two mountains meet, a stream following in between almost as if to separate, and the reminder that the bottom can be beautiful.