Things unfolding…
11.12.2025
Back in Holland after my studio clean-up in June, I spent some time sewing in a nice clean, un-painty environment. Then I was away again — six weeks in Ireland during July and August, and another month up to my birthday in October. And since then, it has been full-on birthday season: me, my husband, a friend, my son, my sister-in-law… all wonderful celebrations full of love.
Eventually I tidied my studio here in The Hague again. It had been so long since I last painted at home (most of my painting this year has been in Ireland), and once the space was ready, I finally began working again. New pieces are in progress — although of course it’s Christmas season now, with concerts, gatherings, and work feeling especially busy.
Alongside all this, I’ve been collecting magazine snippets for a new vision board in January. My 2024 board came to life in ways I could never have predicted, and nowl it’s definitely time for an update.
Looking for Clarity
I’ve been journalling a lot recently, trying to understand my drive to paint — what motivates me, what keeps me returning to materials, layers, and surface. I haven’t changed my methods or materials, but I’ would like a sense of clarity.
I also need to be careful not to get too much “in my head,” because painting is, at its heart, intuitive for me. And yet… I’m curious about where that intuition comes from.
I want to understand the inner logic behind my decisions:
why certain textures call to me,
why layers matter so much,
why some marks stay and others disappear.
My work will always be intuitive, but if I could illuminate that intuition — see the shape of what I’m reaching for — it would feel like a breakthrough. Inspiration comes, and I follow it, and perhaps now it’s ready to grow into something more concrete, more intentional.
I feel myself crossing from exploration into something more deliberate.
And that feels exciting.
Poetry Arrives Unexpectedly
Alongside exploration around my painting praqctice, poetry has entered my creative life in a way I never anticipated. It began casually, almost playfully, when I wrote Summer Freedom for Poets Meet Painters 2025 — something I mentioned in an earlier diary post. I sent it in without expectation, and to my amazement, it was selected for the anthology.
That small recognition opened a door I didn’t know I needed.
Since then, poetry has become a parallel path.
The same poem reached the Top 10 at Éigse Michael Hartnett, where I stood on a stage in Newcastle West and read my own words aloud for the first time. The thrill of that moment — the silence of the room, the energy of an audience listening — awakened something entirely new in me.
Poetry allows me to explore emotions and histories that I’m not yet ready to paint. It gives me another way in.
White Dress
Then something extraordinary happened: I was invited to write for a new Poets Meet Painters anthology accompanying Janet Graham’s exhibition The Architecture of Containment, opening on 1 February next year.
The work addresses the legacy of Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries and Mother and Baby Homes — a history marked by trauma, loss, silence, and endurance.
The painting I chose, White Dress, stopped me immediately: a delicate garment suspended in darkness, dissolving at the edges as though time itself were wearing it away. It felt like a symbol of exposure, erasure, vulnerability, and defiance all at once.
I have spent many hours crafting a poem in response.
Writing it required total immersion — imagining the devastation and loss these girls and women endured. When I paint, I also feel this deep absorption, but here the emotional space was different, heavier. I realised very quickly that I could not paint this subject — not now, not yet. But I could write into it.
Poetry gives me a language that can hold the weight without claiming a voice that isn’t mine.
I’ve now sent the poem off, hoping it will be considered for inclusion in the anthology. I will be at the opening regardless — St Brigid’s Day, 1 February, the feast day of Ireland’s beloved female patron saint. She is celebrated as Ireland’s most iconic female saint and is widely associated with compassion, healing, poetry, and creativity, among other things.
Painting & Poetry, Side by Side
Painting gives me freedom, curiosity, movement.
Poetry gives me precision, courage, emotional depth.
Together, they are shaping a new sense of direction.
Something is taking shape.
And I’m excited to follow it.
For now, I’m simply grateful for this season of openings —
for the paintings that guide me,
the poems that surprise me,
and the sense that my creative life is finally aligning in a way that feels true.
Sandra van Beurden Art 