The Little Dog on My Bedside Table

There is a little porcelain dog on my bedside table.

He has been there for a very long time. In fact, he was already there when I was a child.

He has travelled rather more extensively than most other porcelain dogs ever will. He has travelled with me between continents. He has moved from place to place, quietly making his way through the different chapters of my life.

Every now and then, I look at him, and a memory comes back.

Not necessarily one particular memory. It might be a place, a period of my life, or simply a feeling. Somehow, this little porcelain dog has collected all of those memories without actually doing anything.

And that, I think, is the strange power of keepsake objects.

I am not an especially sentimental person. I don't keep every birthday card (well, almost every birthday card!) or every object simply because it has a story attached to it.

But there are a few things I simply cannot throw away.

They don't necessarily have any monetary value. Their importance comes from somewhere else. They have been with me long enough to become part of my personal history.

The little dog is one of those things.

When I look at him, I don't just see a porcelain dog. I see different parts of my life. He has somehow travelled through all those chapters without changing at all.

Life is constantly changing. We change houses, jobs, routines, interests and priorities. We throw things out and often wonder how we managed to accumulate so much stuff in the first place.

And then there is that one little object that you cannot part with.

Perhaps that is what makes these keepsakes so grounding. They are tiny pieces of continuity. While everything around us changes, they remain quietly familiar. They remind us that although we have moved on, our past lives haven't completely disappeared.

And perhaps we don't need to keep very much. Just a few things that matter.

My little dog is one of mine.

And every night, he is still there on my bedside table.

I rather like that.

Now I'm curious about you.

Do you have a little treasure like this? Something that might look completely ordinary to anyone else, but that you would never want to throw away?

I'd love to hear your story.

Flowers Between the Pages

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Flowers are often seen as ephemeral. They bloom for a short time and then quickly fade away.

You may say that this is simply part of their charm — flowers are beautiful because they don’t last.

But we can actually slow down the whole process a little. We can't stop it, just… gently interrupt it.

That’s where pressed flowers come in.

I’ve been pressing flowers for years and still find it somewhat magical that something so delicate can survive simply by being tucked away between book pages.

It’s such a simple process. No fancy equipment. Just flowers, patience, and the kind of books that found their ultimate purpose as giant paperweights. I have many of them.

I love how unpredictable the results can be. Some flowers keep their colours beautifully, while others fade into soft vintage tones. Some come out looking wonderfully strange — twisted stems, crinkled petals, odd little imperfections — and somehow those are often the most interesting ones.

I also like that pressed flowers don’t try too hard to stay perfect. They become more fragile-looking. But somehow that makes them even more beautiful. A little less polished, a little more interesting.

Over the years, pressed flowers have found their way into my artwork, especially in my mixed media and collage pieces. I love combining them with watercolor, sea glass, found objects, and all the other bits and pieces I seem incapable of throwing away. They bring a natural texture and extra dimensions

that feel difficult to recreate in any other way.

As winter begins in Australia, it feels like the perfect season to revisit collected treasures. I’ve been opening books and rediscovering flowers I pressed during the summer and autumn months. And of course, immediately giving them a second life in my artwork.

If you’d like to see how I use pressed flowers, you can find them on my website in my new card collection and in the Sea Glass and Tenderness collections. I also share behind-the-scenes glimpses of the creative process on my YouTube and Instagram pages. And who knows, it might even inspire you to start pressing a few flowers on your own.

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Scent of Memory

You may think that, as a visual artist, my memories would arrive in colour.

A particular shade of blue.The exact grey of winter light or the golden glow just before sunset.

But no.

It is the smell that reaches me first, the strongest trigger in creating my memories.

The smell of dusty ground after rain transports me straight to our country house in the Czech Republic, where we spent all our weekends and holidays when I was young. The windows are open, and I lie in my room reading, waiting for the rain to stop.

The smell of new books always brings back a Christmas feel. I would receive lots of books each year, and the faint smell of fresh paper and ink feels inseparable from winter mornings, and the anticipation of stories not yet discovered.

The smell of pine forest takes me back to early morning mushroom expeditions with my grandfather. I would follow closely behind him, while he led me to the secret spots where he knew the mushrooms would be waiting. The scent of cool air and the damp moss made these mornings so adventurous.

Lavender is my mother — specifically her daily skin-care ritual. I remember watching her in the bathroom as she moved through the familiar steps, calm and unhurried, while I wondered what it would be like to be older and have a ritual of my own.

The smell of baby powder brings back the days when our boys were small enough to fit easily into my arms. I remember lifting them after their baths - warm and impossibly soft and cuddly. It was a time defined by the simple comfort of holding them.

And the smell of a fireplace instantly places me in my father’s studio in the forest — warmth, silence, and the serious business of making things without needing to explain why.

Curiously, none of these memories arrive visually.

Perhaps scent is simply the most direct of the senses. It arrives uncontrolled, then fades again.

I spend my days working with paints, brushes, pencils, and found objects, trying to capture feelings in visual form. Yet some of the deepest memories of my life appear to be stored somewhere in the air.

Inhale once, and the past returns.

Effortlessly. Unexpectedly. Completely.

Which makes me wonder if some memories are simply waiting in the air for us to notice them.

I wonder what you think.