🖌️First Stroke

Cheryl Quejada Canniong, Sydney 7 June 2026

Excerpt:

Between paintings, there is always a pause — a quiet space where hesitation and possibility meet. I linger before every new canvas, feeling the weight of the first stroke long before it touches the surface. This waiting is part of the work. This stillness is where the next painting begins

Title: First Stroke © Cheryl Quejada ‘Ningjada’ Canning, 2024 — soft pastel on A3 watercolour paper ". Created in the space between paintings, this work reflects the pause before creation — the quiet negotiation between hesitation and possibility that becomes the first stroke.

First Stroke

There is always a moment before a new painting when everything inside me goes still.

People often imagine that artists begin with confidence — that we pick up a brush, choose a colour, and glide into the work as if guided by instinct alone. But the truth is quieter, slower, and far more human. The beginning is never easy. It is a negotiation between hesitation and desire, between fear and possibility.

My poem The First Stroke came from that space — the long pause before creation, the breath held between what I imagine and what I am brave enough to begin.

I linger.

I wait.

I circle the canvas like someone approaching a memory they’re not ready to touch.

Sometimes I hold the brushes just to feel their weight.

Sometimes I pick colours without knowing why. Sometimes I sit in front of the blank canvas until the silence becomes a kind of companion.

This is the part of painting that no one sees — the part that happens in between the visible work. The part where the artist is not yet creating, but already changing.

I’ve learned that beginnings are not about confidence.

They are about surrender.

The first stroke is not a mark on the canvas.

It is a decision:

to trust myself again.

It is the moment I stop negotiating with fear and allow the work to pull me forward.

It is the moment I accept that the painting will become what it needs to become, not what I try to control.

And so, I wait — not out of uncertainty, but out of respect. Every painting deserves a thoughtful beginning. Every beginning deserves time.

This is what it means to be an artist living in between paintings: to honour the pause, to listen to the silence, to let the next work arrive in its own time.

Because the first stroke is never just the start of a painting. It is the start of me — again and again.

Every pause has its purpose. I’ll meet the next one when it comes.