For most of my artistic life, I worked exclusively in graphite. Black and white felt familiar. It was a language I understood, one that allowed me to focus on form, light, and detail without distraction. Colour belonged to other artists, the ones I admired from a distance. It felt vast, intimidating, and somehow beyond me.
I never planned to make the transition.
After the passing of a close friend's mother, her family offered me something unexpected: her vintage Faber-Castell Albrecht Dürer pencil set. The pencils were beautifully preserved, still housed in their original tin, many barely used. What arrived was more than a collection of materials. It carried a history, a life interrupted, and a creative journey left unfinished.
Accepting them changed my relationship with colour before I had even made a mark on the page. It no longer felt like a medium I was choosing to explore. Instead, it felt like an opportunity I had inherited, one I owed it to someone else to pursue.
Those pencils became my introduction to colour. They transformed my work, opening possibilities I had never allowed myself to consider. More importantly, they changed the way I thought about creativity itself. Art was no longer only about skill or progress. It became connected to memory, generosity, and the unexpected ways people leave a mark on one another.
That original set still sits in my studio. As a reminder that some of the most important directions in life are not the ones we choose for ourselves. They are the ones entrusted to us by others.
