There are some seeds that can only be broken open by wildfire, and some, some seeds need stress and the bitter grip of winter to grow and bloom in the spring.

It is not what you might expect, the centre of my studio is not my easel, not the moving table on which new colours and mangled tubes fight for space with brushes, rags and mediums. The centre of my studio is the hearth. It is here, most months of the year, it being the Northern Hemisphere and wood stove my only source of heat, that a fire burns brightly. It is here that I begin, with coffee, black, no sugar, to contemplate the day and how I shall redeem it. Often there lies before me the despair of yesterday's work. The ruination of a painting brought to the edge and over.

My less experienced self destroyed many such paintings. Today, writing this on the edge of winter, I can say that all the long seasons I have spent in the practice of painting, that each mistake is perfect. Each stroke, tentative, impassioned, wavering or fierce, simply mark the trace of my journey. The gestures drawn, not drawn, the loss buried in the next strokes bold redirection were all necessary passage, initiations into what I did not yet know. Everything is always in transition. My suffering was the delusion. This agony just youthful arrogance, to assume wholeness and integrity arises in a painting without repeated mistakes, or learning to endure the necessary tensions of emptiness, stasis, bleak destructions and annihilations. Experience teaches me the discernment of when to let a painting go, when to wait, to rest, when to follow the tracks and meanderings into its deepest harmony. This is winter.

Every seed begins in darkness. For the full fruition of our lives, to know the true depth and tenderness of our soul, we must accept even winter's cold breath. To weather loss, a brush with death, or the isolating presence of a situation we may not have invited, we need to make an effort to understand if not befriend these unwanted, awkward guests. Winter hides within its white cloak, the enlivening potential for our fullest blossoming. Gabryel Harrison