January | Elizabeth Fram

Happy New Year!

I’ve been getting my ducks lined up for the new year ahead – what about you?
What’s on your creative agenda for 2026?

With no chores hanging over me, I loved having time to sketch at our Airbnb every morning over Christmas week. This is Tom Leonard, Scottish Poet, painted from a photo I took at the National Portrait Gallery of Scotland, of a bronze bust by Alex Main (love what Main has to say in this short YouTube video)

Now that December’s festivities and accompanying chores are in the rearview, I’m pretty excited to get back into the studio. Sketchbook time and logging ideas/notes in my studio journal is a given, but otherwise last month’s change of scene (Christmas in Berkeley) and a holiday project for our new grand baby, were a good reset. Taking a breather – whether chosen or imposed – can be a very productive way to keep the creative juices flowing. Or maybe it’s just that absence from the studio makes the heart long to get back to it…or something like that.

The best way to learn about values is to minimize them

And suddenly it’s January — a month that I find tends to be relatively spacious and under-scheduled compared to the other eleven — or does it just seem that way because December is always overflowing? Either way, the weeks of January give us a chance to act on the new year’s sense of possibility. And that in itself is a gift.

A section of our yard, in greener days

My guidepost for the next month (and hopefully beyond) will be one of James Clear’s ideas from his most recent 3-2-1 Thursday Newletter:

“To learn, wander. To achieve, focus.”

I’m planning to put both approaches into action. I am following Peggy Kroll Roberts on Patreon and just enrolled in Lena Rivo’s course “Color Mastery”, which will give me a chance to dive deeply into gouache, as well as, I hope, new ways to think about incorporating stitching.

It was rainy and gray almost every day we were away which, frankly, I don’t mind. It helps other colors sing

Time to get to work!
And best of luck to you as you jump into 2026.

I have come to treasure the month of January.

I can trace my affinity back to college when, rather than an extended holiday break, January comprised what was then called “Winter Term”. It was four weeks sandwiched between semesters when we studied only one course intensively. Distilling concentration to a single subject made the month seem more expansive than any other in the year.

Now, even though well beyond school, that sentiment has stayed with me, though for different reasons. I’m relieved the busy holidays are behind us and enjoy that there seem to be less commitments, the weather is conducive to buckling down in the studio, and there are even leftover Christmas cookies in the freezer!

Indulging in an afternoon of reading on January 2nd, I bumped into strategist / entrepreneur / writer Tré Wee’s blog post “52 key learnings in 52 weeks”. #9 on his list, a quote from poet Judy Brown’s poem Fire, is his “learning” that hit home most directly.

“What makes the fire burn is the space between the logs” * (to which Wee adds, “Negative space is not something we see intuitively, but cultivating empty pockets of space is hugely important in our live (sic) if we want to become more creative and effective.)

It made me realize that what I have come to love about the four weeks of January is they embody a form of the negative space to which Brown refers in her poem. It is a welcome time for regrouping and recharging.

Ironically, January often results in becoming my most productive month each year. As Brown says, “it is fuel, and the absence of fuel together, that make fire possible”. In that light, I would urge you to consider how you too might benefit from seeing and appreciating the negative spaces that surround you.

*Read Judy Brown’s poem Fire in full here.

Elizabeth Fram

Eye of the Needle

Tag Archives: January

The Reward of January

Happy New Year!

January as Negative Space