Where things started.

It’s lovely to be with you in this new little corner of creative expression. If this is your first time coming across my work, hello! I’m Jo (she/her), a designer and artist living in Meanjin/Brisbane, a mostly sunny and often humid city on the east coast of Australia. I’m so happy to welcome you here. And for those I’ve met elsewhere online, it’s such a pleasure to gather here and continue connecting and sharing with you.

Around 2008, after a few years of working in agencies and freelancing, I founded my art and design studio, The Darling Tree. In these 16 years, I’ve focused on working with inspirational brands and clients, publishing works, designing products and creating and leading online courses that help others explore the magic within their own artistic, spiritual or business journey.

Back to learning.

Since 2021, I’ve been pursuing a fine arts degree, which I’ll finish next year in 2025. I chose to do this for my personal art practice. It has provided time and space to explore what I’m interested in artistically, separate from my business and online creative projects. I would never have predicted that it would lead me to the work I’ve been creating within the combined mediums of painting and sculpture, and it has expanded my community locally in wonderful ways. 

While I’ve always loved art, it’s helped me better understand how and why we are drawn to particular artists, concepts and movements. It has been challenging to switch off my designer brain. Perhaps I never really did, as I continually gravitate towards minimal work focusing on colour, geometry, pattern and light, all things that have been part of my work for a long time. Being present as other students discover the interests and values that inform their work and where they overlap or differ from each other has been fascinating.

AI has shifted the meaning and value of producing art again, but this impulse to create from the human mind is persistent. So much of art is about our experience with the world: the sensations, the emotions, and the connections. These are things that tech can attempt to mimic but without any meaning. Human creativity is an essential part of life.

Bringing it back to business.

As we try to navigate a shifting landscape in running businesses online, the commitment to doing things in our own way, focusing on the specific things that light us up, has reaffirmed my desire to follow my interests in business and the online space. If I overthink, try to predict what will happen, or follow a formula given by others, I end up feeling disconnected and stuck. It’s unattainable for me to create the amount of content that social media platforms demand. I’m more interested in the slower pace of creativity and what can happen when given space and time. It will be more meaningful, imaginative, honest, and of better quality. I mentioned that as I don’t know how often I will post. My approach to this space aligns with how Beth Kempton (a brilliant writer I’ve been lucky enough to work with in the past) started her Substack. And her latest reflections and advice after her first year on the platform.

It works best when I go with what feels right. With Substack I have erred on the side of going with how I feel in any given moment, above everything else. – Beth Kempton

Which leads me here.

What drew me to exploring Substack is how it feels like the earlier days of blogging. If you’re like me, the motivation to post on social media may have declined. I feel a strong need to express myself without the pressure to perform. I want to give time to what interests me, what drives my creativity, what that looks like without buying into what’s trending, and how this can be useful to other creatives and business owners. I would love to see personality and the personal back into the aesthetics of our online spaces, which now includes Substack!

The Darling Muses.

This publication name has of course stemmed from my business name, The Darling Tree (shoutout to Carly for brainstorming with me). Why muses? It’s a two-part exploration – what is inspiring me and what may be inspiring to others. I am leaning into the influence fine art and art history has had on me in recent years and unpacking how artists and designers interpret the world around them. That is the general idea, which allows for plenty of space to experiment and, you guessed it, muse.

Share The Darling Muses

Coming up next.

It’s no surprise that one of the first things I’ve been doing here is seeing how people are customising the design of their publications. I’ve been curating a selection of my favourites, and I’ll share the branding and design elements I love and why. I enjoy seeing what’s possible in making a new platform feel like home for creators and a pleasing space for others. Substack has minimal customisation options, which can actually be helpful sometimes for those of us who are overwhelmed by all the creative possibilities, and can lead to interesting experiments. You may have noticed I’ve begun to style this new space, which is just a starting point – my attempt at getting things up and running and not fixating too much on the perfect design just yet.

In addition to that, I want to share more about the concepts I’ve been exploring in my artistic practice as well as offering resources which you may find helpful or interesting for your own creative practice.

I hope you’ll join me in this new space, and I can’t wait to connect.

Sending love,
Jo.