✧Wired Dayz: How an Image Becomes a Beginning.

Writer: Cheryl Quejada Canning, Sydney 27 April 2026 - a 1-minute read.

Excerpt

A reflection on how a single black‑and‑white photo became the quiet beginning of a new idea — a moment of noticing before the making.

Wired Dayz: How an Image Becomes a Beginning.

People often assume I create by instinct alone as if I can make a painting appear with a flick of a finger. But my process has never been instant. It begins long before the first line or wash of colour. It begins in immersion, contemplation, and silence.

This black‑and‑white photo is one example. At the time, I was thinking about a clothing concept called Wired Dayz. I didn’t know it then, but the image became a seed — a quiet starting point for another drawing, another painting, another way of seeing myself in the world.

One of the moments people never see — the noticing before the making.

Immersion, contemplation, and silence are essential to my process, just as much as experimentation and analysis. Painting, for me, sits somewhere between science and alchemy: a space where observation meets intuition, and where each gesture is both studied and felt.

I take photos like this to study shape, weight, gesture, and mood. I sit with them. I let them breathe. I let them tell me what they want to become. Sometimes the image stays as it is, sometimes it transforms into something abstract, anatomical, or internal. The important part is the pause, the moment of listening before the making.

My work doesn’t come from speed. It comes from attention. From noticing. From letting the smallest moment open into something larger.

A thought I’m still following.