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But there’s a second kind of gratitude that most in the manifestation, spiritual community talk about, and it might be the more useful one. Gratitude for something before a single piece of evidence exists that it’s coming.

It sounds almost like a contradiction. How do you thank something that hasn’t happened yet? But it’s closer to faith than most people realise, the evidence of things not seen, just worn as a feeling instead of a belief.

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The pull is normal but it doesn’t have to undo our own work and intentions. And the big thing is not treat it as a sign something isn’t working.

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Left unattended, the default reel tends to be the unhelpful one. Replaying a conversation that went badly, or one that hasn’t even happened yet, imagined in advance, already going wrong. Rehearsing a rejection before any actual rejection has occurred.

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I kept coming back to that scene I told you about yesterday, in the run-up to publishing the book. Not sitting at a desk with a notebook, deliberately trying hard to picture it in detail. Almost the opposite. Lying in bed, right before sleep, in that drowsy, half-there state where your analytical mind has mostly gone quiet for the night and stopped arguing with you about what’s realistic. Or staring out of the window in a semi trance state.

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That book went on to hit bestseller status within days of being announced. I’m not saying the scene caused it in some magical, mechanical way, there was real strategy underneath everything too. But the self-concept came first. I felt like a bestselling author before there was a single piece of evidence that I was one. The scene was the actual groundwork.

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There’s a phrase from Abraham-Hicks that is about placing your order with the universe. Ask, and it is given, that’s the teaching, but the asking has to actually be specific enough to register as a request. A vague order doesn’t get lost exactly. It just can’t be filled, because nobody, not the universe, not your own mind, knows precisely what was ordered.

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Hope you enjoy!

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They look similar from the outside. Both involve waiting. But they’re not the same thing at all.

Patience is arms crossed, watching the clock, enduring the gap between now and whatever you’re waiting for, because you feel you have no other choice. It’s still a kind of holding on, and it’s exhausting in a way that’s easy to underestimate.

Faith is different. Faith keeps you watering something you cannot see growing yet. It's not endurance. It's continued, genuine action, without needing proof first that the action is working.

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Let’s start with you. Most of us, when we decide to get better at something, want to fix it in one big push. One perfect pitch. One flawless camera take. And when that single attempt doesn’t land the way we hoped, it feels like proof the whole thing doesn’t work, rather than what it actually is, one data point.

I think about this as consistency versus intensity. Regular, small effort tends to outperform occasional, big bursts of effort, almost every time, and this is true of nearly anything worth getting good at.

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Many jobs out there train their personnel for emergencies and risk - for example, pilots or firefighters. By the time the actual moment arrives, their body already knows what to do because the nervous system has rehearsed the movements enough times that it doesn’t need to panic its way through them.

Most of us do something very different when we’re facing risk. We brace. We prepare for the rejection before it’s happened, tighten in advance, half expect the no before we’ve even sent the email or made the call. It feels like protection. It feels sensible, even. But bracing isn’t training. Bracing is rehearsing the fear.

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In Day 3, I talked about being ready to actually receive an opportunity once it lands, not just attract it. Today I want to look at something that quietly undermines that readiness before an opportunity has even arrived, and it’s one of the most ordinary things any of us do. Comparison.

You already know, intellectually, everything we covered on Day One. You know the grant winner had six invisible months behind her. You know the harvest is never the whole story. And yet you can still open your phone, see someone else announcing a win, a feature, a sold out show, and something in your stomach drops anyway. Knowing the theory doesn’t switch off the feeling.

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Let me tell you a story. I know someone who runs a well respected art prize here in the UK, a genuinely significant one, a meaningful sum of money attached to it, hundreds of submissions every year.

A few years ago, someone won it. And then, essentially, nothing happened. No visible use of the exposure. No follow-through on the connections it brought. My friend actually reached out afterwards, offering support, wanting to know how the money had been used. Barely a reply.

It’s stayed with me ever since, because it wasn’t a story about a bad application or an undeserving winner. Whatever this artist lacked, it wasn’t talent, that’s exactly what won them the prize in the first place. It was something else entirely, something quieter, and much more common than any of us like to admit.

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You may have already come across this idea somewhere in manifesting or new age writing, the idea of preparing your environment for what you want to come in. It shows up a lot in relationship advice, clear a drawer in your wardrobe, make an actual, physical space for a partner who isn’t there yet, so that when they arrive, there’s somewhere for them to land. It sounds small, almost symbolic, but the logic underneath it is sound. You’re telling yourself, in a very concrete way, that you expect this to happen. Not hope. Expect.

I want to bring that same logic into the studio and the business, because it applies just as directly.

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But nothing about that was instant.

Behind it were meetings nobody saw. Applications that took time to write and fine tune and months to hear back on. Conversations that went nowhere for a while before they went somewhere. A long, quiet run of effort with no guarantee any of it would come to anything.

On social media we often only ever see the harvest. We rarely see the sowing of the seeds

Today’s episode is about the part people rarely share online, but also for giving ourself credit for the sowing of the seeds we do on the regular, and what that looks like in an art business .

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I think I first encountered Kathleen Ryan’s sculpture at the Royal Academy Summer show a few years back. Her sculpture for the show was also used on the promo posters for the annual exhibition. A segment of lemon - bejewelled, luminous and also rotting.

That combination stopped me then and it has not stopped stopping me since.

Then Paris Art Basel later that same year and last year at the smaller Gagosian space on Davies Street, London. It is only when you are standing in the room that the scale registers properly. A rotting half lemon rendered in crystals and gems at around 50cm. A piece of toast covered in mould, over two metres tall and wide, leaning against the wall.

Up close the beadwork is extraordinary. Not glass. Gems and crystals, applied with the kind of patience and precision that belongs to another century entirely.

There is a moment, standing in front of her work, where your first thought is how. How was this made. How long did it take. How does it hold together. And then something changes and the question dissolves and you are simply in front of the work, taking in what it is saying.

She takes the things we discard without a second thought such as the furry lemon, the mouldy toast, the fruit past its moment, and asks us to look at them properly. Because they tell us everything about time, about life, about the fact that nothing stays. She takes those things and makes them monumental. Precious materials and enormous scale. Total commitment to the idea that this overlooked, discarded thing deserves to be looked at properly.

For artists the lesson is not about craft, though the craft is exceptional. It is about what happens when you pursue an idea with complete conviction and refuse to make it smaller or safer. The work becomes impossible to walk past.

I’ve built my own artist website. I’ve helped other artists build theirs. And after all of it, the thing I’ve come to believe most strongly is this: your website isn’t a portfolio. It’s a space. And like any space, it communicates something before a single word is read or a single image is looked at properly.

The question is whether what it’s communicating is what you intend.

Here are the things I keep seeing, and keep caring about, every time I look at an artist’s site.

The favicon. Yes, really.

This is where I’m going to start, because nobody talks about it and everybody notices it.

A favicon is the tiny icon that appears in the browser tab when someone has your website open. On most artist websites, it’s either missing entirely, defaulting to a generic blank square or the Squarespace logo, or it’s been forgotten about since the site went live three years ago.

This matters more than you’d think. When a curator, gallerist, or open call panel has fifteen tabs open and yours is one of them, that favicon is how they find you again. A blank square says: this person didn’t finish setting up their website. It’s a small thing. It takes about four minutes to fix. And its absence reads as amateur in a way that’s quietly damaging.

If you have a logo, use it. If you don’t, use your initials in a simple square. Just don’t leave it blank.

See how easily you recognise these in the image.

Navigation that assumes people know where they’re going

Most artist websites have too many nav items, or the wrong ones, or items with names that only make sense to the artist themselves.

“Musings.” “The Work.” “Bits and Bobs.” I’ve seen all of these. They’re charming in a way that also makes me work harder than I should to find what I’m looking for.

Your navigation should answer one question immediately: where do I go to see the work? Everything else is secondary. Keep it simple. Keep it named plainly. And if you have multiple bodies of work, consider whether a dropdown actually helps or whether it just adds a click between the visitor and what they came for.

Give the work a headline

This is the thing I wish more artists did, and when they do it well, it stops me in my tracks.

When you have a body of work, a series, a collection, a project, give it a statement. You probably already have a series title, but that is supported by a line or two that contextualises what this work is about. What you were asking. What it responds to. What it’s for.

Something like: “This series began when I realised I’d been painting the same window for eight years without meaning to.” Or: “These pieces came out of eighteen months of walking the same route and photographing what changed.”

That’s not pretentious. That’s generous. It gives a viewer something to hold onto, a way into the work that pure images alone can’t provide. It also demonstrates that you think about your practice, which matters enormously if you’re submitting to open calls, residencies, or approaching galleries.

Without context, even strong work can feel inert. A short collection statement changes everything.

Out of date information is quietly catastrophic

I feel strongly about this one.

If your CV lists exhibitions up to 2021. If your news page has one post from two years ago. If the “upcoming shows” section lists something that happened eighteen months ago. If your contact email bounces. Any of this sends the same message: I’m not really here.

For emerging artists especially, this matters. When you submit to an open call, a panel will almost always look you up. If what they find suggests a practice that’s gone quiet, or a professional who can’t be reached, that does real damage to how they read your application, regardless of how strong the work is.

Your website is not a thing you build once and forget. It’s a living document of your practice. Set a reminder (quarterly is fine) to check it. Update the CV. Add recent work. Archive old shows properly. Remove anything that’s no longer accurate.

Think of it less like launching a product and more like keeping a studio tidy. It’s not glamorous, but it signals that you’re working, you’re present, and you take your practice seriously.

Shop pages with no descriptions

If you sell work through your website, prints, originals, objects,, please write something about each piece.

Not an essay. But more than the title, the medium, the dimensions, what it’s made from. E Commerce sites have a product description area and this is for you to add a few sentences about the ideas in the work or how it sits with your current body of work. Honestly, this can also be taken from the series statement and tailored to the individual artwork. Buyers, especially people who haven’t seen the work in person, need something to hold onto. A JPEG and a price tag isn’t enough to make someone feel confident spending money.

A description also does something less tangible: it shows you value the work. It says this piece is worth a few sentences of my attention. A listing with nothing but a price says the opposite, even if that’s not what you mean.

That URL is telling people something

When I land on an artist’s website and the address bar says something like sarahjanethortan.wixsite.com/my-site-3, I notice. And not in a good way.

A temporary platform URL, the kind Wix and Squarespace assign before you connect a proper domain, signals one thing above all else: hedging. It says I’m not sure this is worth committing to yet. And that uncertainty is contagious. If you’re not sure your web presence is worth a domain, why would anyone else think it is?

I hear the counterargument. Websites don’t directly make money. If it’s not going to pay its way, why invest? But that’s a misunderstanding of what a website actually does. It doesn’t sell for you. It exists so that when someone encounters your work, your name, your practice, in any context, at a private view, on Instagram, through a friend, they can find you. That’s it. That’s the whole job.

And here’s the thing: when you come across someone’s work that genuinely interests you, what do you do? Whether it’s a painter, a furniture maker, a ceramicist, a food producer, you look them up. We all do. It’s instinct now. And if what comes up is a subdomain of someone else’s platform, with a number at the end suggesting it wasn’t even the first attempt, the moment deflates a little.

A domain costs less than a meal out. It tells the web your name. It tells Google how to find you. And it tells anyone who lands on your site that you believe in your practice enough to give it a proper address.

Buy the domain. It’s the least romantic part of having a website and one of the most important.

What all of this adds up to

None of these are huge asks. The favicon takes minutes. A collection statement might take an afternoon to draft but will serve you for years. Keeping information current is a maintenance habit, not a creative project.

What they all have in common is this: they show that you’ve thought about your visitor’s experience. That you’ve considered what it’s like to arrive at your work as a stranger. That you’re not just making art and hoping people find their way in. You’re meeting them at the door.

Your website is always on, even when you’re not. Make sure it’s doing you justice.

Esther Hicks, through the Abraham-Hicks teachings, popularised what’s often called the emotional guidance scale or emotional frequency ladder, a ladder of emotional states from the densest at the bottom to the most expansive at the top. It’s not a new idea, but it’s one of the most practically useful frameworks for understanding why some days everything flows and others feel like wading through something thick.

Here’s the ladder, from highest to lowest frequency:

1. Love / gratitude / freedom

2. Joy / appreciation

3. Positive expectation / belief

4. Enthusiasm / eagerness

5. Optimism

6. Hopefulness

7. Contentment

8. Boredom

9. Pessimism

10. Frustration

11. Overwhelm

12. Disappointment

13. Doubt

14. Worry

15. Blame / resentment

16. Anger

17. Fear

18. Grief / despair

19. Guilt

20. Shame

Most of the blocks that show up in creative life such as the resistance to sharing work, the hesitation around being paid, the pull toward staying small and unseen, tend to live somewhere in the bottom third of that list. Fear, doubt, shame. Dense, contracting states that make the next step feel enormous even when it's actually small.

The thing that makes this framework useful rather than just interesting is this: you don't have to jump from shame to joy. That gap is too large, and trying to leap it tends to produce what some call spiritual bypassing - putting a positive face on something that hasn't actually shifted. The goal on any given day is simply one rung higher than where you are. From doubt to worry is still movement. From frustration to boredom is still movement. The direction matters more than the distance.

And have more tools for this than most people realise.

Going on a gratitude walk not a structured practice, just moving through the world and noticing what’s already good shifts something faster than almost anything else.

The ordinary things: the light at a particular time of day, a good coffee, a conversation that left you feeling seen. Helping someone else is another fast mover. There’s something about genuine service that pulls you out of the contracted states almost immediately.

So is doing something purely playful, with no audience and no agenda. Making something for the joy of it such as a recipe you have been meaning to try. Or playing with your pets.

Moving the body when the mind is stuck, a walk, a dance in the kitchen, anything that breaks the stillness the lower states tend to produce.

Getting into nature. Putting on music that has always lifted you. Calling the person who energises you rather than the one you feel obligated to.

None of these are dramatic interventions. That’s the point. The frequency shifts incrementally, and the incremental shifts compound.

What you’re holding energetically is also what you’re broadcasting - which means the frequency you’re in affects not just how you feel but what you’re drawing toward you. The creative opportunities, the connections, the sales, the recognition. This isn’t magical thinking. It’s simply that the state you’re in shapes how you show up, what you reach for, what you say yes to, and what you unconsciously signal to the people around you.

Gratitude sits at the top of the ladder for a reason. And the most accessible version of it is gratitude for the simple things you already have around you; the warm bed, the food in the fridge, the fact that something creative moves through you at all - that is available right now, before anything changes.

I’ve put the full ladder together as a simple PDF you can save and come back to.

Free to download at this link

If you enjoyed this post, you may also enjoy these other ones

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I stopped by the gallery in Mayfair earlier in June and was stopped in my tracks.

Swimmers in bathing suits. Sirens in water. Compositions pared right back — raw canvas in sections, marbled areas of water, figures with white painted faces and dead eyes, each one with tears.

Eerie and otherworldly in the best possible way.

I later learned the wavy water passages are made using a marbling technique - the canvas literally submerged. Once you know that, the work takes on another layer. The process is the meaning.

Downstairs the smaller works. Upstairs the larger ones, with a wave painted directly onto the wall echoing everything below. The whole space felt considered, immersive, coherent.

Kahraman’s own story moves between countries, between belonging and displacement. The figures carry that. Tears rising from their eyes, lifting the tide up the canvas. A work called Eyes in Waters says it plainly.

She describes it herself :

“In a burning world, I turn to water: to seas, to rivers, to tears. The materiality of marbling, submerging the canvas in water, feels ceremonial and becomes a place where spirit might surface. A slow healing, enacted through immersion.”

This is what a practice rooted in ideas looks like. The technique serves the concept. The concept serves the story. Nothing is decoration.

Worth every minute of your time if you can get there before it closes.

Pilar Corrias, Conduit Street, London, W1S 2YT, ends 5th August, 202

See the website

In my roles as a juror for prizes, exhibitions and publications including Art Seen, I read a lot of artist statements. The artwork always comes first. But once a piece has caught my attention, the statement is the next thing I turn to. It either deepens my interest or quietly closes the door.

What closes the door is rarely obvious bad writing. It is usually a disconnect the artist has not noticed themselves. What jurors look for is rarely what artists assume.

The disconnect jurors notice immediately

The most common version of this problem is simple. The statement in the submission has been copied directly from the website. Which tells the juror this is a fixed document, not something considered and tailored for this particular submission or series.

The website statement should be the expanded version. The submission statement should be drawn from it, sharpened and specific to what is being put forward. When it works the other way around, or when both are identical, it signals a lack of engagement with the process.

The research problem nobody talks about

Here is what separates emerging artists from artists who get selected, and it is rarely talent.

Critical thinking. Not as a phrase to drop into a statement, but as an actual practice that shapes the work.

When there is no evidence of looking, questioning, or engaging with art history or contemporary practice, it shows. The work exists in a vacuum. The statement has nothing to anchor it to a wider conversation.

One common and telling version of this is when work clearly derives from another artist, drawing directly on their imagery, and there is no acknowledgement of it. A symbol, a colour system, a compositional approach used wholesale. Sometimes the artist genuinely believes these are simply popular motifs of our times, not understanding they belong to a specific and well documented practice.

It is entirely fine to be inspired by another artist. Influence is how art moves forward. But taking Robert Indiana’s LOVE sculpture and covering it in glitter is not a new work. It is a derivative one, and calling it otherwise does not make it so. Josef Albers spent a lifetime interrogating colour relationships. Referencing that lineage honestly is interesting. Pretending the work arrived from nowhere is not.

Art is ideas in embodied in materials

Without ideas, art is decoration. There is a market for decoration, a genuine and legitimate one, and there is nothing wrong with making beautiful things people want to live with.

But be honest with yourself about which one you are doing. A submission to a serious open call or publication requires a practice rooted in ideas, research, and intention. If the work is decorative, that is not a failure. It is simply a different market, and submitting it to the wrong one wastes everyone’s time including your own.

Critical thinking does not require a degree. It requires curiosity, honesty about your influences, and a willingness to position your work within a context larger than yourself

Your website is not just a shop

There is nothing wrong with selling from your website. Selling your work is the point.

But your website is also your digital home. The one platform you own completely, control entirely, and cannot be taken away from you. It is where collectors, curators, dealers, and journalists go to understand who you are and what your practice is about.

It deserves the same care as your submission.

The statement on your website should be the fullest version of how you write about your work. Your submission statement is drawn from that, focused and tailored. When they feel like they came from two different artists, it creates doubt at exactly the moment you need to be building trust.

The simple fix

Treat your artist statement as a document that evolves with your work, not something written once and distributed everywhere unchanged.

Your website statement reflects your broader practice and speaks to anyone landing there for the first time.

Your submission statement is drawn from it, sharpened for a specific series, a specific open call, a specific moment in your practice.

Same artist. Same thinking. Different focus.

And if you want help writing your artist statement, my free guide walks you through it step by step. Download it here
You can also find a ten minute training in my Instagram Highlights under ‘free training’