London has been my home for the past 7 years. Life here definitely differs from the life in other cities in so many ways. Only a week ago, I have been in Alicante, Spain and a couple of weeks ago I was in California. And every time I leave London or when I come back it strikes me how “squeezed” we are living here. I find that space is very limited in London. Look at the tube. Look at how far you can look with your eyes in most areas. Look at the houses that are mostly small. Streets are small, flats are small and rooms are small.

I can hear some of you now saying “but you are tiny, too” and I’m used to living a bit minimalistic but I’m also an artist! Artist need space, light and they need a proper studio just for creating!

Some artist I know in the city have that studio and pay a not so inexpensive amount for it every month. I don’t have one. I used to transform the garden of my landlady’s house into my atelier and was able to get messy there, especially when I started painting abstract and with a very liquid technique.
Now, I don’t have that garden anymore.

When I was about to board my flight to San Francisco and went to the automatic check-in machine, a woman approximately aged 50 standing only half a meter away from me started to complain about the automation these days. She didn’t say hi or hello, she commenced with: they take ALL the jobs away, don’t they? I said: well, I guess that’s the future, right? But she insisted: but the people will lose their jobs. Me: there will be other and new jobs created then. Lady: as such? Me: who develop, program and maintain those automats and the programs for instance. She didn’t say anything anymore and was obviously not happy that I didn’t confirm her opinion that automats will take jobs away from us. What this conversation shows is that yes, there will be types of jobs disappearing, there will be professions that we won’t need that often anymore because there will be change, constantly!

Someone who thinks that technology or AI will take jobs away is still living in the past and hasn’t moved on with thinking forwards into the future. I agree that change can be scary but I’ve also learned to embrace it and find my very own way to make great use of it.

That brings me to my digital paintings! Out of necessity because I rarely have the space I would really need to paint on canvas with acrylics plus the other limited resource I’m facing, time, I use the great technology Apple and Procreate for example are offering to keep creating what I love to create. It won’t mean that traditional painting and creation are not part of my artistic life anymore. I will be adding the digital way of painting to it. And with that new and different opportunities come up in order to share the artwork with a community, a city and the world.

Back in the 1990’s my first digital drawing attempts where with a Microsoft Paint program, then 7 years ago I started using the Paper app, then Adobe Illustrator and now … when I compare all that with Procreate and the Apple pen these days, I really love how much technology has advanced. I am thankful for the people who keep developing those tools. They enable me, a creative and full-time professional, to create although having limited space and a limited amount of time.

Below you will see a selection of digital paintings I created mostly on the go, before going to bed or during lunch time with my iPhone, stylo and Procreate Pocket. I’m now off to creating more digital pieces and think it’s a wonderful addition to all the other ways of creating.