🔮How My Eyes Shape the Rhythm

Writer: Cheryl Quejada Canning, Sydney   12 May 2026 — a 1‑minute read

Excerpts

I’ve always seen the world up close, in small details — and somewhere in that nearness, my rhythm found its shape.

How My Eyes Shape the Rhythm

Most people think it’s irrational to wake up at midnight, leave a warm bed, and sit in front of a canvas for an idea that doesn’t even exist yet. Why lose sleep over something that hasn’t taken form?

But does everything need to follow logic. No.

In my case, I leave the comfort of my bed to think. My process has always been shaped by how I perceive colour and form. Since I was eight years old, I could only see clearly up close — distance was a blur — and at night, I was practically blind. As my Type 1 diabetes progressed, I developed retinopathy and cataract.

Self -Portrait in Fragments, Oil on Canvas, 2023 - a study of how I see myself in fragments.

In art school, my classmates and teachers often told me I was a natural colorist. They said my colours were organic, instinctive, alive — that I could mix hues in a way that felt effortless, even when I couldn’t see the full picture from a distance. Other artists outside school noticed it too. They would ask how I achieved certain tones, how I layered warmth and shadow, how I made colours breathe.

The truth is, I never learned colour through theory. I don’t consult colour wheels or formulas. I don’t check rules or rely on systems.

My colour comes from somewhere internal — from memory, from feeling, from the way my psyche holds light and shadow. I don’t always know why a certain hue is right; I just feel it. The palette lives inside me. It’s instinctive, shaped by the way I’ve always seen the world up close, in fragments, in softness.

Maybe that’s why my colours feel organic. They’re not constructed — they’re remembered.

I use the quiet moments between 3 and 5 a.m. to write, think, and let ideas settle. I return to them later when my perception is clearer. I don’t see this as a limitation but as a different rhythm. In those hours, there are fewer distractions. My thoughts are more fluid, more filtered. Ideas come through in a more intuitive way.

I don’t do this every day — it’s more like a pattern my creativity uses. I wake up clear‑headed, thoughts already moving, and I need to catch them before they fade.

Inspiration chooses me, but only for a minute. If I don’t act, it moves on — and I don’t mind. In that moment, I was simply the one chosen to receive it.

There is more to see, more to feel — but that belongs to the next moment of clarity.