THE BOWL IN JUNE

nessart16
Jul 4
4 min read

Welcome to The Bowl in June, the sixth blog post in my 2025 Calendar Blog Series. Over the rest of this year, I’ll be taking you behind the scenes of each month’s illustration, sharing stories, memories, and reflections that continue to shape my creative journey.

For 2025, I created a collection that bridges my childhood art with my current skill level - I’ve revisited some of my old oil pastel drawings and watercolour paintings, recreated them digitally, and added reflective thoughts, messages, and affirmations that connect what they meant to me then with what they mean to me now. Each month is crafted with care, representing both the season and a personal story.

June’s calendar illustration came from a place I'm much too familiar with: my relationship with change.

It's always been a bit of a push-pull. I’ve always been a little resistant to it. Maybe even scared. I like comfort. I like familiarity. But, oddly enough, when things stay the same for too long, I start to feel restless, even overwhelmed. It’s a bit of a paradox. I crave the safety of routine, but also yearn for movement, freshness, and something new when things get too still.

Change, to me, feels like a double-edged sword. It’s uncomfortable when it arrives, but it’s even more uncomfortable when it doesn’t.It’s comforting and terrifying, sometimes even in the same breath.

June’s message is about welcoming change with an open heart.

It’s about trusting that when something feels like it’s ending, it might actually be the beginning of a new chapter. That growth often doesn’t feel magical when it’s happening; sometimes it feels like discomfort, confusion, or even grief. But that’s still growth.

It’s about learning to let it come and go as it must, like seasons, or tides, or breath.

This month’s artwork is a still life oil pastel drawing of a fruit bowl, and creating it was a moment where I actually felt like a real artist. The blending, the shapes, the colours — all of it made me feel connected to something deep and true. The bowl was from my teacher’s home, and I spent time studying the textures on the apples, the play of light, and added a somewhat "abstract" background that brought it all to life.

And while the artwork came from a study in observation, the message on the flip side of the calendar came from a deeper place: a study in reflection.

That ordinary, humble fruit bowl became something more to me. A symbol and a metaphor. Its purpose is simple, to hold fruit. Sometimes it’s full, overflowing with colour and life. Other times, it’s empty. But that emptiness doesn’t mean the bowl has lost its purpose. It’s not broken. It hasn't failed. It’s just waiting. Preparing for the next season, its next offering.

And maybe it will hold apples again. Or oranges. Or strawberries. Or, who knows… maybe a single googly eye and a crayon from somewhere deep in the universe of “random things found around the house.”

Not quite the original plan, but maybe the bowl’s just having a quirky little identity crisis.

The point is, something will come. Something always does. The bowl is never truly empty. It’s simply in transition. And so are we.

When something feels like it’s ending, we often panic. We hold on tighter. We grieve.But what if that "emptying" is just the beginning of the next chapter? What if the discomfort we feel isn’t a sign of failure or loss, but simply space being made for something new?

*a tiny sculpture I made for a class to reflect how I was feeling about the act of creating at the moment*

This metaphor means so much to me because I lived it.

Back in college, I went through a phase where I felt very disconnected from my art. I couldn’t make sense of it. Creating used to bring me joy, but suddenly it felt heavy, like I was losing my love for it altogether. No matter how hard I tried to push through, nothing flowed... at least not the way I wished it to. And I kept asking myself:

If I care about this so much, why does it feel so hard?

For a long time I tried to force the fruit back into the bowl. I kept trying to “make it happen,” hoping that if I just worked harder, the spark would return. But it didn’t. At least, not right away.

It was only toward the end of my four years that something shifted. I stopped seeing the discomfort as a problem. I started to see it as space for preparation. The bowl wasn’t broken. It was just… not full yet.

So I used that time. I built my website. I built my shop. I wrote out client dreams and lists of what I wanted to create once I was ready again. I prepared for it and planned for it. I didn’t know when the fruits would return, but I trusted that they would. And when they did, I’d be ready.

That shift — from fear to preparation — changed everything for me.