Winter Ins & Outs

On the final evening of 2025 I was in bed by 10.30pm with earplugs firmly pushed into my ears, cup of tea on my bedside table, good book in my hands (Murakami’s A Wild Sheep Chase). I dozed off. The bang of fireworks woke me at midnight. I stood at my bedroom window watching flashing, twinkling, cascading fireflies of chemical stars. The sky was full of anticipation. Bright hope. Longing. All the usual things people project onto exploding gunpowder.

The next day, 1st January, I woke with a deep sadness I couldn’t quite explain. It sat in my chest like a small stone.

I’m an optimistic person, generally speaking. But I’m easing into 2026 with my eyes partially covered, not wanting to acknowledge the latest atrocities perpetrated by the men who rule this world and are dead set on destroying it.

If only our leaders were artists who drew illustrations instead of drawing up war plans. But that’s a fantasy. The world doesn’t work that way, and wishing won’t make it so. All I can do is drink my tea and turn the page.

My personal new year doesn’t start until spring but my Gen Z son shared his Ins & Outs with me so I thought I’d have a go (see above). Definitely out: Scampering around like a rabbit. In: Slow growing like an apple on a tree.

Out: Fake happy face

In: Resting bulb face.

bulb, 
paper-wrapped world
resting
deep in the soil.
a dancer in the dark
rehearses the performance
while the earth pirouettes.

I am a bulb resting deep in the earth. There is no art being made. I’m mostly tucked up on the sofa reading my way through Murakami’s oeuvres, or watching the delightful show ‘North of North’, or working my way through a course on composition delivered by artist, Alice Mumford. In a nutshell, bulbcore involves being wrapped up in many layers and ingesting inspiring culture that will make its way up into my blooms come spring when I re-open my studio.

oops, i forgot cats are out!

Composition is fascinating but tricky. The simplest explanation, which Alice Mumford gives beautifully, is that composition is how the artist wants a viewer’s eye to enter and then exit the art. Ins & Outs again. I’ve been looking at works I made last year and tweaking them in Procreate to improve their composition. Sometimes that involves putting elements IN. Sometimes taking them OUT. As always, my thinking gets abstract and surreal fast but leads to new ideas.

• How am I inviting you In to my world?

• What do I leave Out of my work? Why?

• What if I made all my Outs in and all my Ins out?

• What would my local community Ins & Outs look like? My neighbours’?

• What if I added an Ins & Outs zine to my little free produce table and asked neighbours to contribute?

• What would a neighbourhood Ins & Outs app look like?

• How am I coming In to this new year, where do I want my eye to go, and how do I want to go Out of the year?

These questions will keep me busy with my journal throughout the cold Winter months.

Candice Lin at Whitechapel Gallery doing a great job of leading visitors IN and OUT of her installation

My Ins & Outs journal questions remind me that although winter is a time of inward reflection, this doesn't mean a complete retreat. I don't need to tell you what's going on in the news. All I know is my local north Seattle food bank saw a forty-fold increase in demand last year. Forty-fold. I keep thinking about that number, how it multiplies in my head like a mathematics problem with no good solution. I need to plant more seeds: literal ones in spring, metaphorical ones now. Slowing down allows me more time to look In at the composition of my neighbourhood and figure out what I need to put Out. It's simple arithmetic. One person can't solve forty-fold hunger, but one person can grow extra potatoes. Sometimes that has to be enough.

My Substack will be slower this season. I’ll be bedded down, writing quietly from this dark place of winter and sending slow messages to you via the worms. I hope they reach you up there on the surface.

I want to thank you, whether you’re a regular reader or someone who dips into my writing only because you’re addicted to Substack Notes and I’m the only thing left to read in your feed. YOU keep me accountable to my Wild Creative Notes. If you didn’t read them and leave the occasional comment as evidence they’ve been read, I wouldn’t write my weekly messages. They would languish as scribbles in my Moleskin and never see the bright light of your laptop or phone screen. You are stellar and you are IN💫

Happy New Year!

With love

J x

More on composition coming to paying subscribers later this week.

If a regular paid subscription is not for you, would you consider paying for a decaf coffee with soy milk so I can keep warm while I write?

If you’d like to read more about my seasonal creative practice, this message gives you an overview of how I organise myself through the year:

Wild Creative Practice: Art Making With The Seasons