Have you ever wondered, standing before a work of art, whether a single line was placed there for a reason? Or if it was simply chance that decided its position, its color, its weight? Does it depend on the medium? On the artist’s personal disposition? On the meaning they want — or don’t want — to attach to what they’re creating?

I’ve always admired (and maybe envied) artists who can express what they feel with broad, fast strokes. Who manage not to control what they’re doing, who let brushes and colors weave themselves into chance patterns. God, it must be so liberating! Pieces like this or this.

These works give the viewer freedom: the liberty to see whatever they want without pressure, without hints, like looking into a mirror. Without the obsessive need for control—the same obsession our species seems so eager to use as a way to slowly self-destruct in a thousand different ways.

Even in the world of embroidery art, there are pieces that carry that same sense of freedom. But here—like in every form of slow art—it’s far harder to resist scattering a trail of breadcrumbs. The slowness of the work itself leaves so much space for reflection. Music helps, of course. But for me, everything that happens while I stitch gets tangled up in the threads. And I’m not exaggerating—I mean literally.

Very often, for instance — and I’ve wondered if it might be a kind of synesthesia — when I return to a piece after a few days, touching the exact spot I was stitching when a certain song was playing, or when the phone rang, or someone said something… that memory comes back to me, sharp and sudden, as if it were happening right there in the moment.

All this just to say: I can’t leave things up to chance. That’s always been my greatest struggle, and the reason behind every failed attempt at oil painting I’ve made over the years (and there have been many). Maybe if I’d gone to art school and built up a strong technical foundation, I would have become a hyperrealist—and probably hated every single thing I produced.

There are plenty of reasons why I feel this visceral need to control my environment, to live in an orderly space, to surround myself with consistent people, to seek out precise, reliable information. Most of it comes from the permanent chaos inside me. But that’s how it is—you’ve got to accept yourself. Luckily, I still have the time and space to keep working on it.

Embroidery, which I only discovered so recently, saved me from that abyss. I never imagined it could be so therapeutic—until I stumbled across the works you see here on Pinterest. Suddenly, I felt an overwhelming urge to try to translate what’s inside me, slowly, one thread at a time.

Over the months, I realized there’s an entire parallel world I had no idea existed—a world where embroidery art is a recognized, loved, and deeply cultivated practice. Especially, as far as I’ve learned so far, in the UK and Japan. And exhibited more widely than you’d believe.

How could I not dive headlong into yet another passion, one with roots buried deep in the earliest history of our reckless species, yet somehow ahead of its time? This art feels tailor-made for me. And the proof is that every time I say “I do embroidery,” no one seems to understand what the hell I’m talking about.