What I Made While I Was Afraid of Losing Everything

Personal, But Contained

There was a period where making things felt precarious.

Not because I was actively losing skills day by day, but because I couldn’t trust that what I had would remain accessible. The fear wasn’t loud. It didn’t announce itself as panic. It sat quietly in the background, shaping decisions, narrowing options, and occasionally surfacing as a simple, unsettling question: what if this doesn’t hold?

During that time, I didn’t make work that was ambitious in scale. I didn’t start grand projects or plan far ahead. I worked close. Small enough to be contained. Structured enough to stop at any point without loss.

I made drawings that could be finished in fragments.

Animals, mostly. Always animals. Studies of posture, weight, expression. Pieces that required observation more than endurance. I chose subjects that allowed me to step out of myself and into something external and stable. If my hands faltered, the drawing didn’t collapse. It simply paused.

Some of those drawings still exist quietly in folders and drawers. Not all of them were meant to be seen. They weren’t made to prove anything. They were made because making nothing felt more dangerous than making something imperfect.

There was a horse study from that period that never became a finished piece. The anatomy is careful. The lines are restrained. It stops exactly where my hand needed to stop that day. I didn’t push it further. I didn’t correct what didn’t absolutely require correction. At the time, it felt unfinished. Now, it feels honest.

There was a small animal portrait that taught me more than any completed work ever had. Not because it was exceptional, but because it was achievable. It proved that precision was still possible in short bursts. That focus hadn’t vanished. That control could exist without being sustained indefinitely.

I also made drawings that were technically unnecessary. Repetitions of the same subject. The same angle. The same structure. Not because I was chasing improvement, but because repetition was reassuring. Each iteration confirmed that the skill hadn’t disappeared overnight.

I didn’t label any of this as fear at the time.

I told myself I was being practical. Conservative. Sensible. And I was. But underneath that practicality was the quiet knowledge that I was building evidence. Not for anyone else, but for myself. Evidence that things were still intact enough to continue.

I didn’t overshare this work then, and I don’t feel compelled to now. It wasn’t performative. It wasn’t meant to inspire or alarm. It was private problem-solving. The kind that happens when you’re not sure how long your current capacity will last, so you work in a way that protects it.

Some pieces from that period carry a particular restraint that I still recognise immediately. Fewer marks. Clearer decisions. A refusal to decorate or embellish unnecessarily. At the time, that restraint was born of caution. Later, it became a preference.

Fear has a way of clarifying priorities.

When you’re afraid of losing everything, you stop wasting effort on what doesn’t matter. You stop chasing scale for its own sake. You focus on what you can do well, reliably, without borrowing from the future.

What I made during that time wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t confessional. It was functional in the best sense of the word. Each drawing answered a narrow question: can I still do this, today?

Most days, the answer was yes.

And that was enough.

Looking back, I’m grateful for those pieces. Not because they represent suffering or resilience, but because they represent continuity. They’re proof that even in uncertainty, work can remain grounded, specific, and honest.

I didn’t make them to preserve a legacy.
I made them to preserve a practice.

And sometimes, when everything feels fragile, that distinction matters more than anything else.