Winter/ Early 2026
In December I was depressed.
My relationship wasn't going well and I knew things needed to change. But knowing that and actually being able to change your situation are two different things.
For a while, I stayed.
At the same time, I was trying to figure out how to deal with everything that was going on. How to regulate myself a little better instead of constantly being caught up in whatever was happening around me.
Horse riding had become part of that too. Being around horses gave me something completely different to focus on. You can't really disappear into your own head when you're sitting on a horse — there's a rather large animal underneath you that requires you to actually be there.
I was slowly starting to notice that I needed more of those things. Things that got me out of my head for a while, without simply finding another way to keep myself busy.
And somewhere in the middle of that, I started making a magpie.
Magpies have always been a thing in my family. My mum taught me one for sorrow, two for joy when I was little, and that apparently stuck. I had also started noticing how good I had become at seeing that one magpie: the thing that was wrong, the sign that something could go wrong, or a warning of the next problem that needed fixing.
So I wanted to make one that could move.
I cut the magpie out of hardboard, covered it in plaster and worked out a system with magnets so I could move it around on the canvas.
Making it wasn't the difficult part. Painting it was.
I hadn't painted properly in a long time. When it came to painting the black feathers, I flinched. I couldn't get them the way I wanted and was afraid of ruining what I'd already made.
So I stopped. The plaster magpie stayed unfinished.
Then, in January, I cut my hair off.
On my way home, I found an injured magpie. An actual one.
I took it home and cared for it for two days. Once it was strong enough, I released it again.
The timing was a little ridiculous. I'd been staring at an unfinished magpie because I didn't dare to paint it, and suddenly I was looking after a real one. You couldn't really make that up.
The plaster magpie was still waiting for me.
At the time I wasn't thinking about any of this as the beginning of an art series. I wasn't trying to become an artist and Studio SaSa didn't exist. I was trying to find ways to deal with where I was mentally, and I started noticing that there were things that helped.
Horse riding was one of them.
Doing something creative seemed to be another.
So I kept following it.
Painting wasn't really the point. Making wasn't new to me either — I've always made things. What was changing was that I was becoming open to creativity again.
To making something without it needing to be useful. To following an idea just because I had one. To trying something without already knowing what it was supposed to become.
The magpie was the first sign of that.
I just didn't know where it was going yet.
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