Jetting off to the other side of the world or hiding away in Reading with my boyfriend while everyone thought I was on an amazing adventure.
Those were the choices I faced on a cold, dark New Year’s eve in Cambridge just two days before my flight was due to depart.
A sketchy plan to meet my friends in a tiny airport at the southern tip of South America suddenly felt pretty risky. It was the early 1990s. None of us had mobile phones back then. What if I missed my connecting flights? What if nobody turned up to meet me at my journey’s end? How would I cope alone in a country where I couldn’t speak the language?
Two years ago, when I first conceived an idea for a jazz-inspired series of paintings it felt a bit like embarking on a new adventure.
Jazz inspiration board
I felt excitement about, as yet, unmade work and curiosity about the source of my inspiration. I had a rough outline of a plan with a hazy destination in my mind.
There was also a sense of unease about the unfamiliar and the possibility of failure, disappointment and a pile of discarded art.
“Do one thing every day that scares you” Eleanor Roosevelt
It can be tempting stick with what we know can’t it? But breakthroughs, growth and innovation seldom come from hanging out in our comfort zones. When did you last do something that scared you?
So what became of my South American dilemma? I spent an unforgettable couple of months travelling with my friends. We camped in the vicinity of volcanoes, were dazzled by the world’s biggest salt flat, got breathless in Bolivia, survived a bus crash in the desert, ate fondue in Argentina, danced in the street with Peruvians, rose at the crack of dawn to see bubbling geysers and marvelled at the Incas' lost city.
Bolivia's Salar de Uyuni
That trip whetted my appetite for more globe-trotting adventures and is, quite possibly, the reason my brother moved to Chile where he has made a home and built a business.
California soul from my All That Jazz collection
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