🧵 Weaving Our Family Creative Heritage

Cheryl Quejada Canning, Sydney 1 July 2026 a 1-minute read.

Excerpt: A creative thread has run through my family since childhood — shared by my sister Rosalie, my brother Sau, and carried from our Ilokano roots. We took different paths, but creativity remains our common language, steady and unspoken, shaping everything we do.

🧵 Weaving Our Family Creative Heritage

This is Rosalie — the sister I’ve shared a creative link with since we were children. Our youngest brother, Saudi (Sau), carries it too. The three of us grew up with the same instinct to make things, to imagine, to shape the world with our hands, even as life pulled us into different directions.

Sometimes I think that thread comes from much further back — from our forefather Pedro Bukaneg, the father of Ilokano literature on our mother’s side. It feels inherited rather than learned, a way of seeing that has been passed quietly through generations. It’s a quiet family creative heritage that continues to shape how each of us sees and makes things.

“You are the bows from which your children

as living arrows are sent forth.”  

— Kahlil Gibran

With Rosalie — my lifelong creative companion, adviser, and the one who always shows up for the work.

Rosalie once planned to become a doctor, went through nursing school, and then moved into education. She’s now a Master Teacher with the Department of Education in the Philippines, and an art teacher who recognises potential before the student does. Sau studied Architecture and eventually found his way into art restoration, working with an international cruise ship crew, caring for artworks from all over the world.

Somehow, I’m the one who ended up doing this full‑time. But my practice has never been solitary. Rosalie and Sau have always been my best critics and advisers — honest, direct, and deeply attuned to the work. Sau brings me brushes and paints from wherever he travels, always choosing the good ones. Rosalie would drive me anywhere in the Philippines just so I could exhibit my work. They understand the rhythm of my practice, the way ideas need movement, space, and support.

We took different paths, but the thread is the same. Creativity is the language we share — steady, unspoken, and carried from childhood into everything we do now.

Sometimes people think art is a solitary or even selfish pursuit, but my experience has never been that. My creative life is sustained by the people who choose to walk beside me — those who understand my rhythm, support my work, and enrich my days in ways that steady me. Some companions arrive early in life, others much later, and their presence becomes a quiet catalyst, shifting the work in subtle but meaningful ways. My practice grows because of these shared moments and the steady influences that make the path feel lighter.

And this thread continues in the work I create today.