Soft Intentions for the New Year

[January 2026]

Shadows at play at a local market.

Dear friends, family and collectors,

After 26 delicious days in South Africa, all of which (except for 3) were spent solely at my parent's wooden log house in Sandbaai, Hermanus, I am back in Vietnam and slowly easing back into the rhythm of life here. We are now in the last month of the Lunar Calender, also called Tháng Chạp in Vietnamese. A friend of mine told me that this is a very special month for all countries and communities who celebrate the Lunar New Year, as this is the month where various preparations and rituals take place in order to prepare the household (including the ancestors) for the new year to come. Here in Vietnam garden centres and nurseries are filled to the brim with yellow flowering plants, plum blossom bonsai's and pomelo all of which were meticulously cared for during the year to ensure that they will carry the best blossoms and fruit for the Lunar New Year. Market stalls are popping at the seams with red and gold coloured decorations and shopfronts are donning their Tết (as the Lunar New Year is called here in Vietnam) best.

Market stalls at Chợ Thủ Dầu Một bursting with Lunar New Year decorations and offereings.

I enjoy the spirit and energy with which the old year is completed (all debts are settled, houses are spring-cleaned, graves and alters are cleaned and renewed, and so on) and the intentions with which the new year is entered. Every action and ritual and special dish intentionally practised and created to lure in the spirits of good fortune and luck, so the new year may be entered on a wave of positive energy. With an eye on the year that has passed, I have been using this time to gently consider my own intentions for the year ahead. Last year was a busy year: I created a lot, I did a lot. And although I very much enjoyed the busyness of all the various projects, I cannot help but feel that some of my busyness was also created to avoid the space and emptiness which accompanies not doing. 

A few beautiful details in and around the market in Thủ Dầu Một. 

And so that brings me to my first "soft" intention for the year, which is to allow more space for nothingness, for time spent being rather than doing. My hope since turning to art full-time a few years ago was that the more I created, the more competitions I entered and the more I did, the quicker I could get myself out there and launched into the art world. Needless to say, doing more does not always necessarily correlate to achieving more (especially not in an industry as fickle as the art industry). As such, my gentle desire for this year is not to fill the empty spaces in my day with unnecessary busyness, but to allow time for slower cups of tea, longer walks in the park with my dog and also moments to truly just do nothing (a sentiment which almost sounds sacrilegious in today's productivity driven world). It is a journey of un-learning so many of the habits that I was taught would lead to a successful life and career; if I am already where I am meant to be, then where I am so busily trying to get to? In the words of Zen Buddhist Master Thích Nhất Hạnh I have arrived, I am home. May this practise accompany my first soft intention into the new year.

A Calligraphy by Thích Nhất Hạnh. Available for purchase on the Plum Village website. 

Which brings me to my second gentle intention. With an eye less focused on outward success, I am able to sketch more and pursue projects not necessarily meant for sale or exhibition. And so, it is my desire to create more space to sketch and draw and paint without any pre-conceived aim (but, oh, how wonderful some of these sketches would look as murals😎), and to write about all the wondrous things which I discover along the way.

Two Colours Green and Detail in Black.

I am currently busy with a mural at a friend's coffee shop here in Thủ Dầu Một. I will be sending a second newsletter this month with photos and juicy details of the mural.

Thank you for accompanying me on this journey. I am deeply grateful. 

May you all have had a gentle start to the New Year.

With all my love,

Nicola

PS. As always, if you enjoyed my musings and know of anyone who might also enjoy my ramblings please forward my blog to them, your support will be greatly appreciated. I would also love to hear from you. So any responses or comments or creative stories of your own that you might have and would like to share with me, please reach out!

PPS. I know it is a Brave New World when I need to start ending off my newsletters with the statement that this newsletter was fully written by me using my fallible human mind and fingers (hands?). I have never, and will never use AI to write it for me, as the writing of these newsletters serve as a kind of month-in-review for me, and that is invaluable. Same goes for my artwork and illustrations. All images, photographs, illustrations and artworks which you see in my newsletters were created by me, by hand in the real world (unless credited otherwise).

Blue, Black and Text As Texture.