Do you ever feel like you are simply going through the motions at times?

For a long time, I thought that was simply what living was meant to be.

Through my adolescent years and well into adulthood, I moved through life much like everyone else around me: following routines, meeting expectations, keeping up with the pace of things.

And somewhere along the way, I realised how easily life can be lived without truly living it.

Not wrongly.

Just automatically.

Not consciously.

Just habitually.

Perhaps technology has amplified this even more. Endless scrolling, constant media consumption, always taking in more information, more noise, more distraction.

And somehow, because of it, time itself begins to feel even faster. We become so overstimulated that we slowly stop fully feeling or participating in our own lives, almost numbed out without even realising it.

And then one day, almost suddenly, you realise how much time has passed.

Now, there is a part of me that wishes to live differently:

to choose rather than drift, to move with awareness rather than habit, and to be more intentional about where I place my time and energy, who I build meaningful relationships with, and the kind of life I am quietly designing day by day.

I am starting to realise something in my art, that perhaps, deep down, even when I do not want to admit it, I have also been secretly performative.

Growing up in Singapore, I may also have been shaped by a culture where we are constantly encouraged to perform, excel, and prove ourselves. And I think I unconsciously carried that into my art too.

At times, I noticed myself painting while trying too hard to create meaning, shape an outcome, or make the work “good”. But the more tightly I tried to hold the work, the less free it began to feel.

Because art, at least for me, was never meant to feel like performance. It was meant to feel like expression. It was meant to be a safe space where I did not have to constantly achieve, prove, or optimise myself.

So now, when it comes to painting, something shifts within me.

I no longer want intention there.

I no longer want to think too much about what the work should say, whether it fits into a theme, or if it will be understood.

I’ve learned, or perhaps am still learning, to do something that feels almost contradictory.

I want to live my life intentionally, but I want to create without intention.

When I stand in front of the canvas, I let go of outcomes and meaning. I stop trying to force the work into something coherent or impressive, and instead allow myself to simply move with colour, texture, instinct, feeling, and emotion.

Somehow, something always emerges from it. Not always in the way I expect, but often in the way I need.

And yet, I have to admit that even now, I do not always live this way.

There are still days when I hold things too tightly, when even the smallest parts of my day feel like they need to be accounted for. Am I doing enough? Am I wasting time? Should I be using this moment better?

It looks like intention on the surface, but it feels heavier than that.

I am beginning to realise that intention was never meant to fill every moment. Perhaps it belongs more to the direction of a life, rather than the weight of a single afternoon.

Maybe that is the balance I am slowly learning, not just in art, but in life too.

To hold direction, but not grip too tightly.

To live intentionally, but lightly within it.

To allow life to express itself a little more freely

To let love flow, feelings breathe, and moments unfold in their own time.

To choose the life I want to walk into, while still leaving space for the unexpected, the unplanned and just simply observing where life takes me.

I am beginning to trust that not everything needs to be shaped.

Some things are simply meant to be discovered.

I choose how I live.

I discover the rest.

Snippets of work created freely, moments where I simply painted what I wanted to paint.