Before the Thaw

Creativity, change, and what the Masters are teaching me about evolving as an artist

Our little farm is covered in a deep, unbroken blanket of snow right now. Fern made sure of that.

Winter like this leaves its mark. Not just on the fields and fences, but on the rhythm of the day. Recording gets harder when the temperatures drop this low—we can’t turn the heat off without risking busted pipes, and that kind of disaster is not something I’m willing to flirt with. The walk to the barn grows heavier every morning. Water buckets freeze quickly, so I carry water from the house to the barn, about the length of a football field, boots crunching, breath visible, hands aching long before I’m done.

Spring can’t get here soon enough.

Because of all this, I’ve put a pause on recording The Art of Returning, the first book I’ve written. But a pause doesn’t mean stillness. It just means attention shifts.

While the booth waits, I’ve been working elsewhere—writing, experimenting, noticing. I’ve drafted the second book in this series, one that focuses on the health benefits of creating art in nature, bringing nature into the studio, and paying attention to how it all makes you feel. I know I feel better once I’m able to walk without trudging through snow, once my body remembers ease again.

But what does that feeling look like on canvas?
Or in a sketchbook?

When I look back at the art I’ve been creating lately, a few things stand out. I can see a clear departure in how I use watercolor. It doesn’t fulfill me in the same way it once did. That realization surprised me at first. Watercolor has been such a companion. So the question surfaced gently but persistently:
Is this me growing in a new direction?
Refining my own voice as an artist?

My gelli plate is still my favorite place to land. That hasn’t changed. But my relationship with line has. I’m far less interested in getting things “right” when I draw. Precision feels boring lately. What excites me instead are the quirky, imperfect lines you find in urban sketching—the way people are captured as impressions rather than exact representations. Movement over accuracy. Feeling over correctness.

I’m leaning toward looseness.

Sometimes that looseness surprises me in the best way. Other times, I look at what I’ve made and think it resembles the work of a very confident three-year-old. And yet, even then, something in me doesn’t want to pull it apart or fix it.

So I keep asking myself:
How do I bring all of these elements together into one voice that makes sense on canvas?

The quirkiness of a street scene.
The abstract layers of a gelli plate.
The softness watercolor can offer.
The boldness of acrylic.
The occasional reach for gouache when nothing else quite says it.

I’ve been using many methods lately—not just honing skills, but listening more closely to what feels authentic. Less about mastery, more about recognition.

Which leads me to a bigger question I keep circling:
How long do artists work before their true voice comes through?
Or does our voice keep changing as we do?

I don’t think this is something we answer alone.

So lately, I’ve been turning to the Masters—not for permission, but for perspective. To see how their work shifted over time. How certainty came and went. How experimentation often arrived long before confidence did.

Maybe finding your voice isn’t about settling.
Maybe it’s about staying awake to change.

Learning From the Masters: Voice Isn’t Found, It’s Lived

When I start wondering whether my shifting interests mean I’m losing my way—or finally finding it—I turn to the artists who stayed curious long enough to change.

Take Pablo Picasso, for example. His career is often taught in neat chapters—Blue Period, Rose Period, Cubism—but lived experience is rarely that tidy. Picasso didn’t arrive at a voice and stay there. He followed emotion, curiosity, grief, politics, boredom, and fascination wherever they led him. Each shift wasn’t abandonment—it was expansion. His work reminds me that changing direction doesn’t erase what came before. It builds on it.

Then there’s Georgia O’Keeffe. Early in her career, her work leaned more traditional and representational. Over time, she stripped things back—less detail, more essence. Her flowers, bones, and landscapes weren’t about realism so much as sensation. She once said she painted what she saw and what she felt, because one without the other felt incomplete. That quiet confidence took years to grow into.

Paul Klee followed a similar path toward looseness. His later work embraced playful lines, symbols, and abstraction—almost childlike at times. But it wasn’t naïve. It was distilled. Klee believed drawing was a way of “taking a line for a walk,” which feels especially comforting on days when precision feels like pressure instead of joy.

And then there’s Louise Bourgeois, whose most powerful work came later in life. Her voice didn’t soften with age—it sharpened. She used form, texture, and repetition to process memory, fear, and resilience. Bourgeois reminds me that evolution doesn’t follow a schedule. Some voices arrive late. Some deepen slowly. Some only speak clearly once we stop trying to impress.

What I notice across all of these artists is this:
Their voices didn’t emerge because they decided on them.
They emerged because they kept working.

They followed what felt alive. They allowed discomfort. They trusted change.

So maybe the question isn’t when a true voice appears.
Maybe it’s whether we give ourselves permission to keep listening as it changes.

Waiting for the thaw—on the page and in the body,
Jennifer