I have wanted a summer like this since I was a teenager. A stretch of time meant for exploring, having fun, and making things just for the fun of it. Not exactly a vacation, but a different way of living. With more ease, spontaneity, and play.
On July 1st, I started an at-home art residency. No plane ticket, no borrowed studio in another country. Just a decision I finally made in order to further explore a part of me that's been longing for less control and to celebrate the season that always brings me the deepest feeling of ease.
It is something I needed. Years into running a creative business, I noticed the actual making, the part that started all of this, had been pushed into the smallest corners of my day. The residency is my way of testing something bigger. How much of a life, and a business, can be built around what I love. Creativity. Nature and a slower way of living. In this, I know I'll find a deeper Connection, to myself, to the outdoors, and to the people who follow this work.
Here is what that has looked like so far.
What an At-Home Art Residency Actually Means
An art residency, traditionally, means leaving home. An artist packs a bag, travels somewhere new, and is given weeks or months to focus only on the work. Away from the usual routines, away from the noise.
I knew I wanted to try this for more than a week and that I also didn't want to leave my family for the summer, so I asked a different question. What if the residency came to me instead? What if I built the same structure, the same protection around my creativity and attention, without leaving my town at all.
An at-home art residency, for me, means treating my own studio the way I would treat a residency abroad. The days are set aside for the work itself (not only creating, but inspiration, time with nature, etc.). Nothing else gets to compete with them. It is a small shift in language, residency vs routine, but it has changed how I make decisions and honour my time.
Mornings for Making, Evenings for Reflection
The clearest change is the structure of the day itself.
Mornings are for creating. This includes: painting, researching, adventuring, playing, holding the vision for where this is leading. I follow whatever the work is asking for that day, whether that means standing at the easel for four hours or walking along the water with a sketchbook and no plan at all.
Evenings are for the other kind of creating. Writing, reflecting, editing. This is when the newsletters get written, when a blog post like this one begins to take shape, or when social content and emails come together. My new assistant and I still handle the admin work of running this brand, but we moved it later in the day, so the earliest and clearest hours go to the art-making practice first.
It sounds like a small adjustment. In practice, it has changed everything about how ideas arrive and how I bring them into fruition.
A Studio That Feels Like a Rainforest
I've gotten deep into a fruit obesssion and right now, the studio smells like grapefruit essential oil and when I look around at the work I'm creating, I see watermelon slices, papaya, toucans, and lush tropical leaves. It has started to feel like a small rainforest has taken over the room.
There is something about painting fruit that slows me down in a new way. The colour inside a cut watermelon, the way light moves through a papaya seed, the wet shine on a leaf after rain. None of it can be rushed. I find myself standing in front of the canvas longer than usual, just looking, before a single brushstroke happens.
This is the kind of exploration a residency is supposed to protect. Not a finished collection with a release date attached, but the research itself. The colour studies that may never become a painting. The hour spent mixing greens that are almost right.
Building a Business Around a Life You Love
The bigger question underneath all of this is whether a business can actually be shaped around a life, instead of the other way around.
I have spent years fitting the making into whatever hours were left over after the running of things. This summer is the opposite experiment. What happens if the days start with creativity, nature, and play, and the business simply grows out of that energy, rather than the energy being squeezed out to serve the business.
This is a slow living creative routine put into practice, not as a phrase but as the actual structure of my days. It is early. I do not have a tidy conclusion yet. But I can already feel the difference in the work itself. Paintings that come from a full day outside, or a slow morning of research, carry something that paintings made in stolen twenty minute windows never quite had.
Connection Is the Real Practice
If I strip this residency down to one word, it is connection. Connection with myself, with enough quiet to hear what I actually want to paint next. Connection with nature, through the fruit on the studio table and the walks that start most mornings. Connection with the people who follow this work, through the honest version of it I get to write in the evenings instead of the rushed one.
That is the core this brand was built on. Creativity, nature, and a wellbeing that is not separate from the work but part of how the work gets made.
Your Invitation
I will keep sharing what comes out of this at-home art residency, the paintings, the colour studies that do not become paintings, and the slower version of running a business that I am testing in real time.
If you want a closer look at how it unfolds week by week, that is exactly what The Flock is for. Join The Flock for the version of this residency that shows up first in your inbox, before it reaches anywhere else.
