People often ask whether creativity runs in families.
In my case, the answer is yes.
Artists appear on both sides of my family tree, stretching back through several generations. Making things has always felt as natural as breathing. Looking back, it's easy to imagine that I inherited a love of colour, composition, and creativity.
But lately I've found myself wondering whether that's the most important thing I inherited.
Families pass down so much more than eye colour or artistic ability.
They pass down stories.
Habits.
Ways of looking at the world.
Sometimes they even pass down silence.
My mother's childhood unfolded against the backdrop of the Second World War. Her father served overseas and spent years as a prisoner of war before eventually returning home. Like many people of his generation, he spoke very little about what he had experienced.
I grew up knowing fragments of those stories, but not all of them.
What I remember more clearly is my mother herself.
She made things.
She encouraged my brother and me to make things too.
She didn't treat creativity as something reserved for professional artists. It was simply part of everyday life.
One day we might be drawing.
Another day we'd be making moss gardens in the woods.
Or building little imaginary cities in the mud.
Those projects weren't really about keeping children busy.
They were teaching us how to notice.
How to imagine.
How to stay curious.
I don't think my mother ever described it that way.
She simply lived it.
Today, when I walk into my studio, I realize how many of those early experiences are still with me.
I rarely begin with a detailed plan.
Instead, I begin with curiosity.
I ask a painting a question and wait to see how it answers.
That approach probably owes as much to childhood as it does to art school or years of professional practice.
As I've grown older, I've become increasingly interested in what else we inherit.
Resilience.
Optimism.
Fear.
Generosity.
The ways we respond to uncertainty.
Some of those qualities are learned deliberately.
Others seem to seep quietly from one generation into the next.
I've also realized that inheritance isn't passive.
We don't simply receive it.
We choose what to carry forward.
That thought has become increasingly important to me.
There are qualities from previous generations that I deeply admire: curiosity, perseverance, creativity, a willingness to begin again.
There are others I've consciously tried to leave behind.
Perhaps that's part of growing older.
Recognizing that while we can't choose the families we're born into, we can decide which parts of their story continue with us.
When I paint, I sometimes feel connected to generations of people I'll never meet.
Not because I imagine I'm recreating their work.
Because I know they understood something about making.
About responding to the world with their hands.
About finding meaning through creativity.
I like to think each painting adds one more small thread to that long conversation.
Someday someone else may pick it up.
That thought makes me smile.
We inherit much from the people who come before us.
Perhaps the greatest privilege is deciding what we leave for the people who come after.