Invincible Summer
On beauty, breaking, and becoming
It is the summer of 2023.
I have just left London — my children, and what remained of the life I have spent almost thirty years building — to step into a life I couldn’t yet name, but could hear calling.
The first month unfolds around what I had already set in motion — conferences, client work, visiting friends.
A training in NVC in Norway reveals the first cracks, and plans begin to unravel.
Beautiful, surprising reunion in Tuscany with someone I loved deeply.
My father’s stroke.
Then the quiet collapse of everything.
The relationships in my life, mirroring back all that I desired but couldn’t yet hold.
I retreat to the island off the Croatian coast, seeking some stable ground.
A place that, despite war, displacement, and decades of nomadic life, is still the closest thing I know to home.
A month of living in swimsuits and linen shirts.
Salt in my hair.
Wind at my back, sailing.
And there, in the midst of it all — the beauty and the breaking — I paint.
My heart is overflowing, but my hands know their way.
Everything I cannot yet name finds its form in colour and shape.
A reminder that joy and pain arrive together.
That our bodies hold a deep capacity to feel, create, learn, and live through it all.
Years pass. Nothing goes according to the plans I had when I left.
Over and over, life surprises me in ways I couldn’t have imagined.
One morning, as I prepare for an exhibition in London, I find the paintings again.
They return to me full of that summer.
Full of love, hope, joy, and a yearning for a life I didn’t yet know I was already living.
So I am releasing them now as a limited edition of prints — a reminder of an invincible summer we all carry within us.
In these strange times, I hope they help you remember, in the words of Albert Camus, that no matter how hard the world pushes against us, within us there is something stronger — something better, pushing right back.
To learn more or add one to your collection, get in touch via email.
