I’m in! I have no internet, so posts will be sporadic til mid Jan {WHAT ~ really? WHY?!} as I borrow and scavenge interweb access where I can. I can’t wait to show you properly what’s been going on here, but am swinging by quickly to share some new work and some images from the First Day, taken just before the removal men turned up and filled my house with crap my beautiful things.

I MISS you guys, and blogging and sharing and being part of this little online world. {Not that little, in fact, is it, really.}

Here is the studio, empty and ready for New Stuff to happen in it.

Please note the butler’s sink, the skylights {which open electronically!?!}, the storage and table space.

The way the light falls in, the fact that that entire right wall has storage running behind it. There is room for four people comfortably I think.

And the porthole windows with views of the sea! Seriously? I get to live here?!

It takes me, oh, a good thirty seconds to reach the beach. Although the first few days I wasn’t physically able to leave the house ~ it was too lovely! Now I’m down there every day. It’s better than tv, always changing, always soothing to my soul. And as much as this move is a glorious, exciting thing, other life things continue to happen and they are not always glorious and exciting, so soul soothing is required at the moment.

So then, I had to try out the studio! I have a STACK of unfinished, unloved canvases, just waiting for renewed life, so I started on a big one that just hadn’t worked although I had loved the idea. I forgot, of course, to photograph it before diving in with the paint, but you can still see a little of it underneath the first strokes.

If you follow me on Instagram {@taraleaver} you will have seen most of these. This palette is unusual for me; I rarely use black but I was inspired by Mati Rose’s recent pieces on there too.

Besides, a new start is the perfect time to try doing things differently. It has been quite interesting putting things in place in the flat in accordance with how I live and want to use the space. That will evolve over time and a lot of it is provisional just to get rid of the cardboard boxes, but I find myself intrigued by the possibilities of how I might like to live that is different from before, from the obvious {beach alert} to the tiny daily details.

I’m really loving this painting; it’s not finished quite yet but not too far off I think. I have ideas growing and turning over in my mind as I slowly pull the studio together. Right now it looks NOTHING like the above images, as everything is unpacked but not yet put away in an orderly fashion {ha}; I have enough art materials to amuse a small army it turns out!

And I hope that I will. 🙂 Amuse, inspire, offer a healing and fun place for people to find their way back to their own creative selves. It would be a crime not to share that space. And although I’m kind of terrified, now that it’s so much nearer {I’ll begin in the new year}, it still feels right.

It feels so good and comforting to be speaking to you again. Moving is a discombobulating thing, whichever way you look at it, and it feels a little like a touchstone to come here and show and tell a little bit. Thanks for being here. 🙂

xx