🌼 Life & Art Philosophy

Cheryl Quejada Canning, Sydney 21 September 2026, a minute read.

Life & Art Philosophy

Some transformations begin quietly. Not with a revelation, not with a grand moment, but with something small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. For me, it was a tiny flower I picked up while walking, a simple gesture that lingered longer than it should have. It stayed with me, quietly, until it opened into colour on the canvas.

Before the painting existed, there was only a flower in my hand. That small moment became the starting point of Marahuyo, guiding the colours and shaping the story that followed.

I didn’t expect that small moment to become a turning point. But life often reveals itself in fragments, in pauses, in softness, in the things we almost overlook. That flower reminded me that wonder doesn’t always arrive loudly. Sometimes it arrives as a whisper, asking you to pay attention.

My life has been shaped by responsibility. I know the weight of duty, the steadiness of choosing what is necessary, the discipline of carrying what must be carried. But I also know what it means for the heart to awaken unexpectedly, to feel something that rearranges the quiet spaces inside you. Love did that. It didn’t erase duty; it simply illuminated the parts of me that had been waiting to feel again.

This awakening changed my art.

It gave my colours a different kind of courage.

It gave my lines a different kind of softness.

It gave my work a different kind of truth.

On the canvas, duty and love no longer stood apart. They blended, intertwined, coexisted. My art became the place where both could breathe without conflict — where responsibility could stand beside tenderness, where structure could meet wonder, where the heart could speak without needing permission.

I learned to trust the process more deeply:

to erase without fear,

to begin again without hesitation,

to let intuition guide me even when logic wanted control.

And in that trust, my art found its clarity.

My website now holds the quiet record of this evolution not a gallery of achievements, but a map of becoming. A decade of work shaped by courage, softness, and the quiet persistence of a heart learning to live between two truths.

I don’t chase recognition.

I don’t chase applause.

I create because it is the most honest part of my life, the part that continues even when everything else shifts.

My philosophy is simple:

Begin with something small.

Let it stay.

Let it change you.

Let it become a world.

And in those small beginnings, I find myself again.