The ‘Moving’ Gremlin
The Relief of Circulation
Lately, I’ve been feeling a particular kind of relief. One I didn’t recognise at first, because it doesn’t arrive as rest or resolution, but as movement. It comes when a painting leaves me properly, when it’s packed, wrapped, stacked, and no longer hovering in the room asking to be reconsidered. When this happens, I feel lighter. As if something essential has been completed, and the completion has made room rather than taken it away.
The more my work circulates, the less attached I become to holding it. I find myself wanting the paintings to move, trusting that their movement isn’t an ending but part of their life.
There is a confidence in this that I didn’t always have. Earlier in my career, I was almost afraid of selling work. Subconsciously, I think I feared I wouldn’t be able to make it again, or that it was so special to me I couldn’t bear to give it away. Now, I feel the opposite. I want the work to circulate. Sell them, ship them, let them go. Make space and I’ll make more. It’s surprising how clearly my heart has swung in the opposite direction. Making something doesn’t require guarding it forever in order for it to have mattered.
Around the same time as this shift, I began noticing the words I use with myself. I heard Tracee Ellis Ross speak about language, about how words are directional, and it stayed with me because I could feel it already at work in my own thinking. The way I speak about time has changed. When I notice a quiet afternoon or a free evening, I no longer think I should save it. I think, make now, because soon this pocket will be filled. Inshallah, there will be more work arriving. New demands. New responsibilities. This thought doesn’t rush me. It steadies me. It turns time into something to honour rather than hoard.
I see this new relationship with circulation reflected in small, almost unremarkable actions. I sell a painting, and the next day I pack another, not because it has sold, but because I feel finished with it. Ready. And then, often, that painting sells soon after. This has happened enough times that I no longer dismiss it as coincidence. The act of preparing seems to say: this can move on, and I will still be here to make the next thing.
What supports all of this is placement. Not metaphorical placement, but literal. Where I put my body. Where I choose to work. There were two evenings recently when it would have been easier to stay home, to work from the kitchen table. Instead, I went to the studio for an hour and a half. Nothing ambitious. Just presence.
Both times, something unfolded that couldn’t have happened anywhere else. One evening, I was on a call discussing a possible feature and mentioned the small postcards I’ve been making. The other person joked about a shoebox of notes, and without thinking, I reached under my desk and pulled out the shoebox that’s lived there for years. We laughed, paused, and decided that shoebox would become the centre of the piece. Another evening, I was painting and realised I wanted a specific colour and a set of marker pens, materials I wouldn’t have had at home. The work shifted because the tools were there.
These moments weren’t planned, but they were enabled. By being in the right place, with the right things within reach.
What I’m learning is that circulation, language, and placement aren’t separate ideas. They’re one practice. How I speak shapes how I move. How I move determines what I’m ready for. And what I release makes room for what wants to arrive.
The excitement, I now understand, isn’t in holding. It’s in making. And making becomes easier, calmer, more generous, when you trust that what you make is allowed to leave you. There’s a domestic comfort in this, like keeping a house where things are used rather than preserved.
SO. The emphasis shits - I no longer wait for the moment to arrive; I build the conditions that allow the work to keep moving, and trust that movement itself is the signal. Knowing that I am already in motion.
From The Factory >
Not many people know the shared history of Yemen and Cardiff. This week, I’m returning to family photographs for a new series, tracing the migration of Yemeni communities into Cardiff Bay. Grandson on His Wedding Day, Cardiff - acrylic on canvas, 2026.
Prompts >
JOURNAL:
Where am I holding onto work that is ready to move?
ASK SOMEONE:
What is one work you were scared to let go of?
CREATIVE ACT:
Pack or release on finished piece today.
The OGs >
Original Gremlins
What Gremlin have you already outgrown, even if it still visits?
Musings >
“Cinema is not about answers. It’s about arranging chaos so something true can escape.”
- Agnès Varda“I make films to disturb myself. If I’m comfortable, I know I’m lying.”
- Werner Herzog“The work has to move. The moment it becomes precious, it’s already dead.”
- John Cassavetes
