This is Why I am Here

on tending the creative spark in a fragile world

Feb 01, 2026

Hello dear world. 🌱 Today is a special day in the traditions of my Celtic ancestors. Imbolc marks the stirring of life beneath the surface, the ancient halfway point between winter and spring in the Northern Hemisphere. For my ancestors, it was a time to honor Brigid, the goddess of poetry, healing, and hearth. From what I understand, they would light candles or fires to symbolize the returning light, perform cleansing rituals, and look for the first signs of new life, like lambs being born or the first shoots of green in the forest and fields. It was a time of hope, preparation, and I like to believe it was a time of honoring the creative spark.

Around the same time of year, my Norse ancestors celebrated a festival called Dísablót. It was a time to honor the Dísir, female ancestral spirits or goddesses who protected their families and the community. It was tied to fate, protection, and the hope for fertility and prosperity. The festival also welcomed the coming of brighter days as winter began to wane, similar to the Celtic anticipation of spring.

Why does this matter to me? Because both of these seasonal traditions point to something I feel very deeply in my own life and work, the understanding that creativity, care, and attention to the seasons are not luxuries. They are necessary acts of tending, as necessary to our health as food and water. Imbolc is about the quiet work that happens before anything is visible. Dísablót is about honouring what protects and guides us, even when we cannot see it clearly, and both acknowledge that there are forces at work beneath the surface, in the land, in the body, in the imagination that work with us in a co-creative way. (See my essay from last week to know more about these thoughts.)

The work that I do in the world all lives within this same space. My work is not about big ideas or dramatic transformations or creating masterpieces, but it is about learning how to notice the first shoots of green that push their way through the snow, and the way the sunlight made the air seem filled diamond dust this morning after a light snowfall overnight. (Note: my daughter sent me a video of the snow sparkles this morning, exclaiming her excitement. She is definitely my child!) My work is about learning how to stay in relationship with wonder and awe. It is also about how to sit by the hearth and heal when we need to, and how to keep our small flame alive through even the darkest seasons.

I believe, I so deeply and profoundly believe, that having some kind of creative practice is one of the oldest human ways of doing exactly that. It teaches me how to see what is quietly emerging, and also how to listen. It teaches me how to stay in relationship with the world when things feel uncertain or fragile and how to honour both what has been carried forward through generations and what is asking to be born from me right now. It helps me align myself with what the world right around me needs, right here, in this moment. That is a powerful thing. In that sense, the work I offer is not separate from these ancestral rhythms. It is a continuation of them, translated into paper and pencil, brush and pigment, words and notebooks and digital magazines like you are experiencing in this moment by reading this essay. These are my own very modern ways of tending the creative spark, so it can warm, nourish, and steady me and hopefully those who encounter this space, and all the spaces that I tend.

This is why I’m here.

At the centre of everything I do is a very simple belief: creative practice is a human need, not a special talent.

You don’t have to call yourself an artist. You don’t have to be “good” at anything. I mean, how good do we have to be at something to benefit from it? Think about the millions of people who enjoy playing golf and you have your answer. No matter what you choose to do as your practice, you don’t have to show your work to anyone. Creativity, as I understand it, is about learning how to see, how to notice, how to stay present, how to be in relationship with the world as it actually is. It’s about TRUTH. Drawing, painting, writing, keeping a notebook, even capturing digital images on my phone, these are not performance acts to me, but ways of paying attention, of staying awake to beauty, complexity, tenderness, grief, and quiet joy and of nourishing myself in a world that often pulls me toward anxiety, fear, and disconnection and feeling pretty hopeless at times, if I am honest.

My vocation is to help people build a gentle, sustaining creative practice that belongs to their real lives. I’m a working artist and writer, and I’ve been teaching creative practice in different forms for many years, both online and in person. My teaching lives at the intersection of art, attention, and daily life. I teach drawing and painting in a very grounded, accessible way, not as a march toward mastery, but as an invitation into relationship. I’m especially interested in learning how to see rather than how to perform; building a regular, sustainable creative rhythm; letting process matter more than outcome; working with curiosity instead of judgment.

Alongside visual art, I also teach notebook and sketchbook practices, and I write about creativity as a way of living, not something separate from the rest of life, but woven into it. Much of this teaching happens through my Patreon, which is a quiet, steady, immensely friendly and inclusive community space where I share classes, practices, reflections, and conversations with people who want creativity to feel nourishing rather than demanding.

One thing I am very proud of is having written three books on drawing and creative practice for Quarto Publishing Group. Writing a book is quite a journey, as well as a tremendous amount of work, and to do it three times is something I never imagined I could do. All three of my books have the same core intention of making art feel welcoming, possible, and very human. They’re practical and how-to oriented, yes, but also philosophical in their own quiet way. They’re for people who want to draw, but also for people who want to see better.

I’ve also created several foundational classes that live on platforms like Craftsy, The Great Courses, and Wondrium. These courses focus on watercolour painting, drawing and observation, and they’re designed to be gentle, encouraging, and deeply grounding, especially for people who may feel intimidated by art or unsure where to begin. And, of course, I have a YouTube channel filled with free lessons on many different kinds of creative projects.

These classes, the books, the studio work, and the writing you find here are not separate projects to me. They’re all expressions of the same belief that creative practice is a human need, not a special talent.

A little bit more about my writing. I feel it is as central to my life as drawing, maybe even the very centre hub of the wheel. For decades before I began to draw and paint, I wrote fiction, poetry, and personal essays, often circling themes of presence, grief, wonder, attention, magical realism, and what it means to be fully human in a fragile world. Writing is where I let myself think slowly, feel honestly, and stay close to what matters to me in that moment. This Substack, Fleeting, Breathing, Human Things, is the central place that my writing lives, with reflections on creative practice, daily noticing, the non-dual experience of grief and joy, wonder, and the small, luminous things that hold us together. You’ll find that I’m not especially interested in answers, but I’m much more interested in good questions.

So why am I sharing this with you today? I have welcomed many new subscribers over the past few months, most with unfamiliar names, and I hope for you to know who I am, why I am here and what my work is in this fragile and profoundly beautiful world we all share. I’m self-employed, which means I do need to speak plainly about what I offer in order to survive, but, more than that, I want you to understand why I offer it. I truly believe in what I do, that learning how to make things, and how to notice and engage with the world more intimately while we do it, is one of the most resilient, nourishing skills we can develop. A creative practice teaches us how to stay in relationship with ourselves, with each other, and with the living world around us. In difficult times—and we are living in difficult times—creativity is not an indulgence. It’s a way of remaining human. It’s a way of tending what is still alive and helping it to not only survive, but to thrive. That is the work I’m committed to and that is what I am quietly offering with everything I do.

Below I have shared various links to places you can find me. If you are new here, I hope you will stay a while, introduce yourself, and share in this journey of the practice of paying attention and making. I don’t expect everyone who finds this space to draw or paint or write in the ways that I do, but I do hope this can be a place where we practice noticing, together, what is fragile, what is luminous, what is quietly asking for our care.

If you’re new here, I’m glad you found your way. For all of my readers, if you feel like responding, I’d love to know what kind of tending are you longing for right now? What is asking for your attention right now and how might you meet it with a little more care?

Links:

My Patreon: Weekly lessons; live community lessons and gatherings; seasonal workshops and standable deep-dive classes. Private mentorships are also available.

www.patreon.com/kateriewing

My YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/user/kateriewing

My Classes on Craftsy:

https://www.craftsy.com/author/instructor_3129

My Classes on The Great Courses:

https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/kateri-ewing

My Books:

https://www.quarto.com/ourbooks/default.aspx?booktype=BY_AUTHOR_KEY&bookauthorkey=27174105&currentpage=0

My Most Popular Online Workshop:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/sketchbook-habit-149428109?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

My Website:

https://www.kateriewing.com