13/08/2026
A little storytime.
Many years past, there was once a little girl. She was full to the brim with wonder. She could see joy and light and colour in everything. In each glistening ripple of water in the harbour, in every shimmering iridescent wing of a bee as it perches atop a thistle. She looked and saw, and looked and felt. Her heart was so overflowing with each moment celebrating this astonishing world that she wanted to remember, to keep it for always. So she took photos on her camera. Some captured a sense of place she could remember the feeling of. Some captured the people she felt so closely connected to. None could capture the colours she saw, that she felt in that moment. The colours disappeared. She looked hard at the photographs, printed, enlarged. Those wonderous colours which inspired her experience of the world, could not be captured.
She turned to art, to color pencil, felt tip, pastel, paint. Here. Here is where she could see that pure colour again.
She used her colours to feel joy in every detail, in each soft petal as it curves away from its fluffy tangerine centre. The joyous hues found on the delicate surface of skin as it pours over bone and muscle. She painted and painted. And saw and saw and felt it all. She shared her joy and colour and wonder with others and they felt it too. They connected.
One day she stopped. Just like that.
She stopped painting, creating. She still saw and felt, but forgot. Forgot how important creating joy with colour really was to her.
She got distracted by big ideas that felt very important. Other people's ideas, expectations from somewhere other than her own heart. She lived, she experienced so much joy and laughter and fun and travelled very far and very fast.
She moved so fast through life that she couldn't stop to take time to create. To give herself slow time to breathe and breathe. To notice and see. Deeply see. To be once again filled to the brim with wonder. To truly see again the joy and incredulity of what our world has to offer. To create once more.
This is my promise to that little girl that I won't forget her again. This is why I create.
Copyright Laura Arkle 2026.
This text may not be used without the author's consent.