Spring in Sequence
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This is the first time I felt spring in sequence. Crocuses. Cherry blossoms. Primroses. They appeared on my walks on different days. I found myself receiving them differently. Daffodils. Magnolia. Bluebells. There is something in being able to recognise these small arrivals, reassurance perhaps, in knowing that things arrive in their own time, even when spring seems to burst open all at once. Dandelions. Wisteria. Elderflower. Though too quickly one after another, and then somehow it’s already the end of May. I’ve been feeling time move very quickly in recent years, but this one has been the fastest and strangest.
On two random days in March, I cracked open an egg and found two yolks inside. The first was surprising but the second left me unsure whether to read it as a bad omen or a good one. I still wonder what the odds are of it happening twice in one month.
On the morning daylight saving time began, I had the worst period cramps ever, as if my body had noticed too that there were not enough hours to spare while finishing an animation project.
In April my right hand fingers were constantly aching from the long hours of holding the Cintiq pen. They feel like rusty cogs when I work long hours ever since DonDon unintentionally bit me on a vet visit two years ago.
Just as I was wondering whether my body had begun to get rickety, I remembered reading about research suggesting that the human brain enters its adult era at 32, which means I only became a real adult not long ago. I was still deciding what to feel with this information when I read about mayflies, and how they have probably been doing the same mating dance since before the dinosaurs. They live only for a few hours or days as adults, and answer that small amount of life with such an ancient, dedicated gesture. Something in that eased the ache a little.
Around the same time, with slightly aching fingers and this strange sense of time, I finished the animation I had been happily working on and delivered it on time. It was for the Taiwanese calligrapher Yi-Chun Wang’s solo exhibition, Hide and Seek, in Taiwan. The phrase hide-and-seek in Mandarin is 躲貓貓, which literally carries the image of a hiding cat.
The animation responds to the exhibition’s movement between hiding and finding, which grows from the way Yi-Chun’s life with her cat, Taro, has shaped her practice and sense of inspiration. From there, it opens into the encounter between the viewer and the work, where looking becomes a kind of mutual searching.
I felt close to this immediately when she came to me for the project - you probably already know by now how much of my own work begins with small, mundane things and cats. I also loved the contemporary feeling in Yi-Chun’s writing and framing. So it was a really fun project, and I’m very grateful for her trust in this collaboration!
The animation follows an ordinary day from Taro’s point of view - the small movements, disappearances, and returns that happen around a home. I blended Yi-Chun’s writing into these daily scenes, so that the centre of the animation is not only the cat, or the artist, but the time formed between living, writing, and companionship.
The animation is titled A Lifescape with Taro (芋泥日巡圖), a title that plays with the naming tradition of Chinese calligraphy and painting. And it’s on view as part of Hide and Seek in Taiwan until the 3rd of August. I’ll share more about the making of this piece soon, but if you’re in Taiwan, don’t miss this show! Here’s a video about the exhibition with English captions:
Another highlight from my drawing desk - the illustrations I made for Decaying with the Speed of Spring, the photography and illustration artist book, have been longlisted for 2025 Booooooom Illustration Awards, and shortlisted for the 2026 V&A Illustration Awards. This recognition is especially meaningful to me because it comes from a museum I’ve loved for a long time, and because this project has always felt a little more experimental and personal.
I also moved my shop from Etsy to my own website earlier this year, and have recently updated the listings, including prints from this illustration series. If you’d like to bring a piece of fleeting spring into your home, you can now find them here!
Apart from that, I’ll soon start a series of posts on the making of my picture book Crown Shyness. I’m not sure yet how many there will be or how often I’ll manage to write them - writing takes longer than I expect every time - and each post will focus on one theme I found important or interesting in the making of this book.
I’m writing the first one and will share it in June, beginning with how the story started, where the inspiration came from, and how it developed. If there’s something you’ve been curious about, reply to this email or comment in the post, and I’ll do my best to include it in a future post!
I think that’s all for now. It suddenly feels like summer today in the UK. After all we are nearly in the middle of the year, even if my sense of time is still trying to catch up. Though Dondon is shedding her winter coat, which I guess is helping make the season very real to my nose.
Take care, ta!