People often ask how I went from being a musician to becoming a painter.
I didn't. I simply kept following the same instinct.
In 2019, after my divorce and just before the world shut down with Covid, I found myself asking a question that many people ask in their fifties.
Is this really how I want to spend the rest of my life?
For me, the answer was immediate. No. Way.
At first it felt like a crisis. Looking back, it was something else entirely. It was clarity.
I realised I'd been given something I hadn't expected: an opportunity to begin again. A gift.
So I went back to the thing I'd always loved most. Making things.
With a background in music, writing songs felt like the obvious place to start. But I knew myself well enough to understand that if I simply waited for inspiration, I'd never build any momentum.
So I set myself a project. Fifty original songs in fifty weeks.
Not fifty great songs. Not fifty polished songs. Just fifty finished songs.
The goal wasn't perfection. It was practice.
Every week I wrote, played every instrument, recorded, mixed and produced a new original song. Week after week. Some were better than others. Some I still love. Some I barely remember. And some, still make me cringe slightly.
That wasn't really the point. The point was to build a body of work.
Somewhere along the way something unexpected happened. I stopped worrying about whether I was talented enough and became interested in what happened when I simply kept showing up.
The songs taught me that creativity isn't a bolt of lightning. It's a habit.
They also revealed something I'd probably known for most of my life but had never really admitted to myself.
I'd always wanted to be an artist. Not necessarily a painter. Just an artist.
Someone whose life revolved around making things rather than performing them.
For years I'd earned a living as a musician, performing constantly. There are people who are extraordinary entertainers and I admire and respect them enormously.
But it wasn't me. It never was. Standing in front of people wasn't what interested me.
Making something that didn't exist yesterday did.
The songs quietly led me towards painting. Without them, I'm not convinced I would have picked up a brush with the same conviction.
They taught me to trust repetition. To stop chasing masterpieces and to accept that meaningful work usually emerges from the accumulation of ordinary days.
Today my studio looks very different from the room where I recorded those fifty songs. The instruments have been replaced by paint and canvas, but the process hasn't really changed.
I still turn up. Make things. I still don't know exactly where each piece is going when I begin and I still believe that building a body of work is infinitely more valuable than waiting for a masterpiece.
Looking back, I don't think that project was about music at all.
It was about giving myself permission. Permission to stop living creatively through other people's expectations. To make work that felt meaningful to me and permission to discover that the life I'd been searching for wasn't waiting somewhere else.
I simply hadn't allowed myself to live it.
Fifty songs didn't change my life.
They showed me the life I wanted to live.