Amara paints. She stopped calling herself a painter years ago; the word felt like a claim she still had to earn, and some days she suspects she always will. So she skips the label and just does the work, every day, at whatever pace it needs.

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The paintings are abstract. Ask her what one is about and she will tell you it is about something specific, she just cannot summarise it for you, and she has given up trying with people who need that summary handed to them.

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She works slowly. In a world that treats urgency as a sign of seriousness, her patience reads as almost defiant. She has missed things because of it and carries no regret over any of them. Work made at her own pace is the only work she trusts enough to sign.

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Her studio looks like it is used, because it is. Paint on the floor, canvases turned to face the wall, a palette that has gone untouched since the current piece began. She spends on good materials without hesitation, and once in a while on a piece of jewellery, though she always holds it first and waits to feel its weight before deciding. Everything else about it matters less than that.