I don’t know about you, but when I imagine “creative people” or “artistic people,” I usually picture something like a big surface — maybe a canvas or a huge sheet of paper stretched across the wall of a giant, bright, white studio. And there’s a person painting with their whole body, moving freely, paint splashing everywhere. You’d need a ladder just to reach the edges. You get the general idea.

On the other hand—life looks quite different. Not that I would mind breaking into scenes like that, but sadly, it’s rarely possible. Reality photobombs that beautiful frame of the free-spirited creative woman inside me who really wants to exist normally. It’s very frustrating.

I know I’m important too, and you can’t pour from an empty cup—if I don’t fill up, I can’t give. It’s important to find time for myself and the things I care about. True. No argument there. Still, there are times when it just doesn’t happen—no time, no space, no inspiration, no desire. Working with materials right now is a great and fulfilling idea, but I’m already tired from just thinking about the effort it would take to set up.

And I also know that it really does make me feel good, nourishes me. Then I think of those for whom working with materials is not natural or part of their routine—who guarantees that, in the end, the effort will pay off? That the encounter with the material will even be worthwhile? Pleasant? Where does all of this lead? Could there be comfort, relief, enjoyment in it?

When I was in that awful age when everything changes, when you’re constantly comparing yourself and starting to form all sorts of conclusions—some pretty strange and mostly distorted—I used to think I was tall, and that was it. Girls quickly learn to relate to themselves based on their most noticeable physical trait. I was tall, and in my experience, that meant being “big.” This had many implications, and I let it stop and limit me in many situations. I took up a lot of space, and this clashed completely with my personality (at the time) and how I wanted to behave—which was mostly about not standing out or attracting special attention. It was a contradiction that was hard to live with.

I wanted so badly to be small. I envied those lucky enough to be petite; it seemed to me the most beautiful thing a woman could be. I imagined all those small girls growing up to be lawyers or neat businesswomen in pencil skirts, high (but comfortable!) stilettos, carrying stylish handbags, busily tapping everywhere they went, always in a hurry.

I thought that if you’re small, you can afford to spread out and take up a lot of space, because you yourself won’t seem to occupy that much. So go ahead, go all out, even if you wear crutches a meter high instead of shoes—you’ll still look good overall. You can jump high, go wild, express yourself completely freely. You can stretch out a huge piece of fabric and paint on it with both hands, no brushes, dip your fingers into the paint and draw big circles and lines everywhere, thick and bold. You can work with your whole body.

Even if you do all that, with the joy of a child you still look beautiful and good, you don’t overshadow anyone, don’t dominate, and you’re not excessive. No risk of hurting anyone or anything. Even if you jump very high, you won’t hit the ceiling; if you stretch your arms out, you won’t bump into anyone—you won’t touch anything. So be free and calm; do your thing.

If you’re big, you already take up a noticeable amount of space, so it’s better to shrink a bit. You yourself are a kind of spectacle by default, and there’s not much room left for anything beyond yourself. Without wanting or being asked, you already fill most of the reasonable space a person can occupy, so what’s left for you is to do small things—lest you hurt the environment, really hurt it, clash with it.

That’s how it was in that extreme period of adolescence in Wonderland, everything was at the edges—you either ate from the big side of the mushroom or the small—and the consequences were extreme and far-reaching. A distorted, backwards relationship between physical size and amount of freedom, rough and harsh rules I imposed on myself and generously allowed others (of course, these rules never applied to boys in my eyes at any point). In this distorted logic, creating and expressing oneself in a small format was considered self-limitation, which back then was a punishment in my eyes, a fate that wouldn’t change. So I worked in small notebooks and with little material.

Motherhood created a feeling that now physical size no longer matters. Reality dictates a distance from the freedom to do everything big and take into account only what and how I want. After I grew up, shrank, and again and once more in every round of size and smallness, a new little player was born. Now we shrink because it’s the order of the hour—there are new little players on the field, and they need lots of room from us grown-ups. Thoughts and more “realistic” tasks come in, and the routine sweeps away the rest; sometimes it sweeps so strongly it carries away a lot, and all that remains is to dry out and gather the pieces until the next wave.

Over time, things have changed, and after I grew and matured, I allowed myself to work big, even very big, to be (sometimes) that big and sprawling creative entity.

Fortunately, that freedom to take up a lot of space also led to a much more positive attitude toward smallness. I stopped seeing it as limitation, necessity, or meanness and began seeing it as an opportunity to express myself strongly, simply, and concentratedly—which is also more practical and fitting to the intense reality of life.

The fact that it’s impossible (or undesirable) at every moment to drop everything and work on a monumental scale doesn’t mean you can’t achieve a similar effect working on a much smaller scale, maybe even palm-sized. Maybe even the opposite: smallness is like a tablet containing a lot of good in a concentrated form, all the important parts inside, essentially the dose. In any case, it’s not a less creative or expressive act, and it allows a satisfying sense of completing a process in a relatively short time.

I learn a lot about the power and possibilities of smallness from the works of my clients. I find myself marveling and being influenced by them, holding in my heart the choice to work small from a variety of motives, starting points, and contexts, using all sorts of materials and means of expression.

Small work can be an invitation to come closer and really get to know what appears in it. It requires special focus and attention. It can hold surprises, revealing itself only to those who consciously choose to focus on it and perhaps for a moment ignore the context and everything around it.

This is true even for the presence of a very small image within a larger work; the immediate impulse is to come close and examine what’s there. Small work manages a dynamic relationship with the space it occupies in a significant way—even when it stands alone—precisely because of its tiny size. It is part of the present background surrounding it, and this dynamic can teach a lot about the experience of positioning oneself in the world, feelings of belonging, the similarities and differences between the individual and their environment, and more. All these are meaningful themes and central motifs that occupy many clients (sometimes even the very reasons they seek therapy).

At the same time, small work has the ability not to show at all. It can hide inside a container or a cover, be carried on the body, kept in a hand or a pocket. It gives the creator a choice regarding the kind of connection it invites—if any at all. Maybe it was created to be completely private, like a song for a drawer. It can have great significance precisely because it is itself a secret. When my eldest daughter first went to municipal kindergarten, she struggled a bit at first. To ease her, we bought stickers on which we drew small pictures and wrote her name—“power stickers.” She insisted on sticking them on the inside of her shirt, near her heart, so only she would know they were there and to keep their power safe until the end of the day, without worrying they might get lost in the sand or at an encounter with another child.

Smallness leads to choice and editing. Even if several materials or elements are used, every part is present and influential, with a role. Smallness also allows control—materials that might provoke fear or feel less predictable in their behavior are easier to use in small doses and usually lead to a feeling of achievement and completion relatively easily and quickly.

I invite you to shrink a little, zoom in, and see how it feels to create something small.

Since I started writing not just for myself, I’ve received a few curious comments about the length of my posts—how is it that in an age where people spend on average seven seconds reading a post, I allow myself to write 1,300-word posts? I’m still debating this and trying to explore the ability to shorten and condense from a focused and whole place that doesn’t come with a feeling of giving up or compromising, alongside the desire to express myself big and completely free. Time will tell…