THE QUIET SEASON

The tree outside my studio is showing off right now. It's a Queen's Crape Myrtle, and earlier this week I took Leo (My Golden Retriever) for a walk and found it a hundred percent in bloom, ruffled and purple and completely sure of itself. It does this in the deep, muggy heat of a Miami summer, which is exactly the stretch of the year when I have the least to give. The heat is exhausting and the humidity is unbearable. However, this tree finds itself in all its glory in the midst of extreme weather.

I love that we are on opposite schedules, the tree and I.

It blooms when I am not as active. And right now I am taking an active pause, my mind is always thinking and getting inspired but I'm not as many hours as I'd like to be in the studio.

For years I loved this tree mostly for its dried pods, the beautiful little woody stars I gather late in the season and pair them with eucalyptus stems to wrap around my notes to collectors and the certificates of authenticity of each piece just before they leave me.

I love this part of the process, getting a painting ready to be welcomed by its new owner. It's just as exciting as creating the piece. By the time I collect these dried pods, the flowers are gone and the leftovers are the gift. So when I saw the dry pods were not there, it surprised me to catch it at full volume, because I had been so heads down and busy with life that I missed the whole turn. It made me think about how differently the two of us keep time, and about the seasons of a creative life that almost no one sees.

The giving season

There are seasons of ongoing momentum, of genuine highs, of "go and go and go." Commissions, projects, collaborations, the flow where the ideas come faster than you can paint them. That productive season is real, and I am grateful every time it arrives. But that kind of output draws down a reserve, and at some point the reserve is simply lower than you want to admit. Time is limited, and so is energy. No tree or flower blooms all year long. As humans, we have so much to learn from that.

So these past few months, I've slowed down. Not because the conditions are wrong, and not because I've been waiting for some perfect mood or a muse to tap me on the shoulder.

I've slowed down because good, meaningful work takes real energy and real intention, and you cannot pour from a well you never let refill. When you run at full speed with no rest, the work starts coming from autopilot instead of intention, every mark made out of momentum rather than meaning. And that is the opposite of why I paint.

The turning

This is the part I keep relearning, so I'll say it plainly. There are stretches where I am completely in it, hours disappearing in the studio, pieces almost finishing themselves with a smile on my face of how every brushstroke adds up perfectly and creates an interesting composition, everything seems to "click." And there are stretches where there is nothing to force, only to gather. Both are real. Neither is a failure. The mistake I used to make was treating the quiet as a problem to fix instead of a season to respect, to recover, to gain more energy, to rethink, to learn.

The Queen's Crape Myrtle tree understands this better than I do. For most of the year it is nothing but green leaves and bare branches and lots of dried pods, and nobody stops to photograph it (though I do…) All that time, invisibly, it is gathering itself for the one extravagant thing it was built to do.

The bloom is not the work. The bloom is the visible result of months of work no one was paying attention to.

The fallow season

While some people might picture an artist's "quiet season" as time spent idle, staring at a wall, the truth is that there is more than meets the eye. And don't get me wrong, there is some of that: the staring at the wall (or the ceiling, when I'm lying on the floor, is real), the long thinking, the sitting with a piece until it tells you what it wants. There is a lot of that, and it matters more than it looks like it does. But there is also so much else.

There are the color tests and the slow experiments that never make it onto a canvas. Lately I've been making some of my own pigments from coffee grounds and red wine for certain pieces, and that has been exciting, learning new techniques and trying to achieve new textures on canvas and paper.

There is also a lot of reorganizing, moving the studio around so the space actually serves the work. Sometimes all I do in a day is shift one canvas from one wall to another, or set a few side by side, and suddenly something resonates and a whole new idea arrives. That is the beauty of the creative process: it's full of challenges, but also full of unexpected discoveries.

And there are the days with less paint and more screen, the long hours at the computer, the emails, the catalogs, the brainstorming with other creatives for collaborations that have quietly been three years in the making and still have not stepped into the light.

My creative practice is so much more than the moments pigment meets canvas. There is a choreography to it. Constant moving around, canvases shifting from table to floor, me circling them, layering one translucent wash over another, sometimes with meticulous precision and patience, other times letting loose and allowing my hand to move more freely, creating something ethereal and working on instinct. The work lives in that back-and-forth of control and release.

So yes, from the outside, a season like this can look really quiet. And the scorching temps in Miami, honestly, don't help much; they make us want to hide in the coziness of home with the A/C blasting and a favorite movie on. But quiet is not the same as empty. There is a lot of work being done in silence.

What's actually growing

Here is the part I am most excited to tell you: I am working on 10+ new pieces that will release during the Fall. Some I started recently while others have been in progress for months or even years. I could have rushed them. Instead I have been taking my time, letting each one arrive to its final destination with real intention, sitting with the materials in the studio and that feeling of promise of what's coming next for each until the connection is genuine.

So, no, I am not in full bloom this minute. I am in the green-leaf season, gathering, while the tree outside my studio does the blooming for both of us. For most of the year that tree is nothing but leaves, quietly preparing for the one extravagant thing it was built to do. The bloom is never the work. The bloom is the visible result of months no one was allowed to see and then it gives you all its splendor.

The seasons always turn. This pause is anything but still; I am gathering, absorbing, and building quietly toward what comes next. And come fall, all of it will bloom at once, in full color. I'm excited to share more soon. Stay tuned.

All photos by Nicolle Cure