I don’t know exactly when it started, this habit of mine—leaning against the window, watching a West Coast rain streak down the glass while my mind wanders somewhere between the hydro wires and the ghost of my own reflection. Sometimes it’s a deliberate pause, like a snow day for your brain; other times it sneaks up the way the smell of cedar or the sound of distant traffic on a wet afternoon does—quiet, insistent, impossible to ignore.

We Canadians know a thing or two about windows. Maybe it’s all those long nights in January, or the way the world looks softer under a layer of Vancouver fog, but I’ve come to believe that staring out windows is one of those rare, unfiltered moments when you finally stop bullshitting yourself. No agenda. No need to perform. Just you, a chipped Tim’s mug, and the world unspooling in its own quiet, stubborn way.

Most people will tell you staring into space is wasted time. That it’s unproductive, that nothing gets done. Maybe that’s true if you measure your life by paycheques and hydro bills. But in those blessed little moments of sweet fuck all—the world cracks open just enough to let something real in. Sometimes, it’s just a low, existential ache that matches the hum of the baseboard heater. Other times, it’s an idea that won’t leave you alone until you drag it into the world, kicking and screaming like a toddler in a snowsuit.

The day I started “Ghosts of Kyiv” was one of those moments. News out of Ukraine was everywhere—raw, relentless, as inescapable as the spring thaw on the Prairies. I found myself standing at the window, coffee cooling in my hand, staring at nothing and everything. My brain wandered off to that distant skyline, scarred by war but still stubbornly upright. Suddenly, it all made sense: the painting wasn’t going to be about war, not really. It was going to be about what gets left behind—about the light in the windows, the shadows between buildings, the invisible weight of all those lives caught somewhere between hope and heartbreak.

That’s the thing about letting your mind wander: if you’re lucky, the best ideas sneak in when you stop trying so damn hard. You let the world show itself—not as you wish it to be, but as it is. Messy, resilient, aching for a bit of beauty in the middle of all that noise.