Why I Paint When Words Fail Me

There are feelings that live below language. Not because they're too complex for words, but because they exist in a register that words simply don't reach.

I discovered painting accidentally, the way you discover most things that matter — through a bad week and a friend's spare room that happened to have art supplies.

What painting does that writing cannot

Writing is sequential. You move through an argument or a story in time. Painting is simultaneous. Everything is present at once. The colour in the corner speaks to the line in the middle. There's a kind of thinking it demands that I find nowhere else.

On being bad at things you love

I am not a trained painter. I did not study it. I make technical mistakes constantly. And this, I have come to understand, is precisely why it works for me as a practice.

When I paint, I am not performing competence. I am just doing.

— Niomi, May 2026