Drawing Through It - Small Works from a Difficult Season
For me, creating is like breathing. It is one of the most intimate ways I know to communicate, sometimes with others, sometimes with myself.
At the beginning of this year, I was going through one of the more difficult periods of living with Long Covid. My medication was temporarily unavailable, and the fatigue, pain, and brain fog became severe enough that I could no longer work. I spent weeks mostly in bed.
Small works on paper, marker, A5, 2026
Painting was not possible. Painting means colours, brushes, water, movement. It means standing, bending, and working on the floor. None of that was available to me then.
But drawing was.
I kept a marker and a sketchbook beside my bed. That was enough.
The works that emerged during that time are small A5 drawings made entirely intuitively. The first two carry titles I gave them almost without thinking: Fatigue. Pain.
Fatigue is almost nothing, two crossing lines and the word itself. That was the most honest thing I could make that day.
The illness also cast its shadow over my emotional state. Some of the darker works came from that place. There is sadness in them, and fear. Fear that the illness might restrict my life even further. During that time, my world became very small.
But slowly, things began to shift.
As my condition stabilised, I developed two new painting series, Pressure Marks and Unmaking. I participated in a group exhibition and was featured in Visual Art Journal. I have also gradually returned to work.
Long Covid has not stopped the work.
But it has changed what the work looks like on certain days.
These small drawings are a record of that.
