SOLITUDE IS NECESSARY. ISOLATION ISN'T.

Some of the most important work I've made happened alone. No audience. No collaborators. No external validation. Just me, a room, and the stubborn need to keep going. But some of the most important moments in my life as an artist happened because another artist called me out, encouraged me, showed me something new, or simply reminded me that I wasn't disappearing into my own head.

I have been paitning for most of my life. It has remained such a constant that its importance to my wellbeing feels almost biological - as necessary, at times, as breathing. Much of my life as a painter has been spent alone, navigating the technical, emotional, and psychological highs and lows of the process privately. Reaching out for help has never come naturally to me. I've always preferred to work things out slowly, in my own way, at my own pace.

Part of the appeal of becoming an artist when I was younger was exactly that solitude: the idea of being left alone to make what you wanted without interruption, opinion, explanation or judgement. But being locked away in a studio, away from the world and other people, is not always the answer.

Having been through the art education system, I completely took for granted what it means to be surrounded by creative people - people driven by the same internal need to make work. During those years, constant converstaion, feedback, experimentation, and shared ambition became normal without me even realising it. After university, I was excited to see where my work would take me, but like many people leaving art school, there was no clear job waiting, no obvious. structure to step into. You crash back into a world that no longer feels like it fits who you've become.

Studios get built. Rooms get covered in paint. You get a part-time job. You keep painting. You hold onto the one constant that grounds you and keeps you alive, but slowly the realisation creeps in that you are drifting further and further away from the creative environment you once took for granted.

One day you look up from the canvas and realise there is nobody there. Your support network has dwindled, or disappeared entirely. The conversations around you are no longer the conversations you need. The people in your orbit are not making work you connect with - but then again, neither are you anymore. At some point you relise the problem is not the solitude itself, but isolation. You have become too disconnected, and eventually the work begins to suffer alongside you.

Realising that I still needed a communtiy of like-minded artists around me also forced me to reconsider what those connections actually meant. They were not simply about networking - a word that many arists seems to instinctively recoil from. Perhpas that is part of why so many artists, myself included, end up isolated. We are taught that putting ourselves out there, meeting other creatives, and building connections is primarily about career advancement. Networking becomes something transactional, something performative. And if you are not naturally good at it, you begin to feel as though your creative practice itself is at risk.

Maybe the emphasis should never have been placed on networking at all. Maybe it should have been placed on maintaining community. Reaching out to peers is not only about opportunities or visibility, it's about being understood by people who recognise the strange emotional rhythms of a creative life.

There have been periods where I couldn't pick up a brush, and I'm sure there will be many more to come. Over time, I've started to see these creative blocks less as failures and more as periods of reflection - moments where something internal needs time before the work can continue. But even when you understand that intellectually, those silences can still feel isolating and deeply frustrating. What community offers in those moments is perspective. Hearing another artist describe the same doubts, frustrations, or creative paralysis can reduce the shame that often grows in isolation. You realise your struggles are not evidence that you have failed as an artist, but part of the reality of sustaining a practice over time.

At the same time, not every artistic community is the right fit for every artist. Simply being surrounded by creatives is not enough. The most valuable communities are not ones obsessed with success or visibility, but ones that encourage honesty, persistance, and continued growth. The best artistic communities do not just celebrate achievement - they normalise the ongoing pursuit itself.

The moments shared within a peer community through simple discussion and critique can sharepen your insticts when you return to the studio alone. Exposing yourself to different approaches, opinions, and ways of thinking prevents creative stagnation and challenges habits that you may not even realise you have fallen into. Over time, you learn to recognise the signs that a painting is drifting away from where you need it to go. But there is only so far your own perspective can take you before it begins to loop back on itself.

Conversations about your work can generate ideas, questions, and possibilities that solitude alone cannot provide. Good critique is not about somebody telling you how to paint, if anything, the right conversations reinforce the fact that you are ultimately in control of your decisions and your direction as an artist. Sometimes hearing another perspective gives you the confidence to trust an instinct you already had but were hesitant to follow.

A strong peer community also changes the way you engage with other artist's work. Watching people around you evolve, push through difficult periods, and develop their own visual language can be deeply motivating. there is something incredibly rewarding about contributing to another artists's growth while simultaneously expanding your own sense of possibility through witnessing theirs. Artistic growth rarely happens in complete isolation. Even when the work itself is made alone, it is often shaped through dialogue, exchange, ecouragement, disagreemnet and relection shared with others. Sometimes another artist sees the shape of your work before you do.

The idea of maintaining, or even becoming part of a creative community can often feel intimidating or exhausting before it even begins, especially for artists who are naturally introverted, but being part of a community does not mean constantly socialising. There is often an unspoken pressure within creative industries to always be visible, always attending events, always presenting yourself and your work to others. Community can easily become confused with performance. But meaningful artistic connection is rarely built through constant visibility alone.

Some of the most valuable creative relationships I have had have not depended on daily interaction or large social circles. Sometimes community is simply knowing there are a handful of people you can reach out to when the work becomes difficult - people who understand the language of your practice without needing everything explained.

For many artists, online spaces can also provide an important sense of connection, with platforms such as Instagram making it easier for introverted artsits to reach out to like-mimded creatives across the world, whether for advice, support or simply the reassurance that others are experiencing similar struggles within their own practice. However in my experience, nothing truly replaces a face to face conversation about your work.

Social media can be a complicated and contradictory space for artists. These platforms are often heavily shaped by visible success, productivity, and self-promotion, which can sometimes have the opposite effect to genuine connection. Instead of reducing isolation, they can intensify the feeling that everyone else is progressing while you remain stuck. Because of this, artists have to be careful and intentional about how they engage with those spaces.

A meaningful artistic circle does not need to be large. The word "communtiy" often suggests a huge network of people all contributing towards some thriving creative environment, but in reality it can be mych smaller and quieter than that. Sometime surrounding yourself with just a few trusted peers for occasional studio visits, converstaions, or critiques is enough.

Ultimately, the goal of community is connection, not constant visibilty. You cannot always be available to the people around you, and nor should you be.

Artists still need solitude. We still need long periods alone in the studio where the work can be developed privately, away from noise and expectation.

A peer community doesn't dilute artistic identity, it protects it. Not because other people make the work for you, but because they remind you that making work is still part of being human.

Community is not the opposite of solitude. It is the support that makes solitude sustainable.