Talking to a friend recently, the idea of 'Saturn returns' came up. The concept for those who don't know, is that when Saturn returns to the exact position in the sky that it had at the time of your birth, roughly every 28 years, you'll experience a major a life transition or step change in personal growth. 

Well, I laughed, I love a bit of myth and folklore but I take horoscopes with a pinch of salt - something to be enjoyed but not taken too seriously. But over the next few weeks I realised something. I had been noticing a pattern in my journey as an artist.

As an artist I find the question "when did you start" always a stumps me. Because it's not just a business idea I woke up with one day. It's who I am. It began in 1984. But sometimes I find myself giving different answers; because there have been serval formative moments along the way; the forks in the road. 

This August I'll be 42 and I always get a bit reflective around my birthday... but then I discovered there's more to the theory of Saturn than just the returns every 28 years... there are 7 year phases too! Check-points as Saturn makes each quarter of the circle back. And here's what I found...

From 1984 throughout my childhood, I was 'the arty one'. Undoubtedly my favourite thing to do was simply to draw, paint or create. The women in my family were all brilliant with textiles and showed me how to sew, knit and embroider. I loved watching them but making textiles this way was not for me; it required rules and I'm a bit more of a 'rules were made to be broken' sort. Always adding creative license to the things I make.

My teenage years were a little bit more rollercoaster, as a daydreamer with a rebellious streak. My art teacher failed me for lack of focus and it it broke my heart a little bit - well quite a lot actually! I thought I couldn't do anything very creative after that and so I went to Sussex to study social sciences...

But then came 2006 (Known as closing the square in the 7 year phases)... 

Almost immediately upon graduating I knew I wanted a creative career. The future stretched out ahead with that question, put so well by Mary Oliver "what will you do with your one wild and precious life?" I knew it had to be creative. But by now I had the 'wrong qualification' so it was going to be a zig-zag path back... 

Yet back is where we are going of course, as we round that square and approach a Saturn return!

Moodboard 2022.

The big bang moment came age 27. Almost on the dot of my birthday, I left my job, moved cities and began a Masters course called Graphic Arts. But what had happened in the interim 7 years to get me from there to here?; I had worked at 'The World's Largest Museum of Decorative Arts' as a visual researcher, the wonderful V&A. I had tried several creative paths but the unforgettable moments were all wrapped up in this place. I had never felt more at home. That was how I knew I had to be a hands-on maker.

The MA was challenging but the best life decision I ever made. I finished the course Christmas of 2012 and returned to London where I worked for the next 7 years as a designer for lifestyle brands; Graham & Green, Habitat, Bloom & Wild and many more.

2019, my illustrated stationery was getting noticed, stocked in The Royal Academy of Arts and featured in Vogue. But I still felt limited by the scale at which I was working.

By the time the pandemic of 2020 hit I was newlywed, pregnant and beginning to question the freelance work I had been doing for so long. Oh and by the way, this is exactly the moment described as the next 'check-point' following Saturn's big return at 28 - I am now 35. I started writing a lot of notes through my maternity leave, using those snatched moments during nap-times to ask myself 'what is next?' Perhaps acutely aware of the chance I might be swallowed up whole by the love I had for my sweet baby daughter Flora, I wondered 'will I still be myself? - and the age old question 'how will I juggle it all'...

Ready to pop, 2020.

The rest after that is recent history and perhaps you know, I began painting a series of flower patterns and eventually launched my first wallpapers once my daughter was at nursery. But what else had taken place between 2012 and 2022 to give me the confidence to go solo and put my own original designs out into the world at this scale?...

Practice! I had used every spare moment to paint and design the things I wanted to - rather than the briefs I was given for work. I found my style, I focused on what I loved and I was building my name slowly all the time. I am an experimenter and my MA studies had unleashed the creative beast and given me back the tools I needed to explore with. I decorated everything from ceramics, fabrics to stationery and books. I took on illustration commissions and I did all of this around my regular work. I even handmade lampshades and walked with huge boxes to an after-hours Post Office in Hampstead, just to fulfill the orders. None of my experiments were especially practical as longterm enterprises - but my goodness did I learn from them! All those lessons became like a basket of ingredients, that I have poured into what I do now.

I learned to celebrate the handmade and the original. I learnt to hustle but also when to stop. I learned my strengths and my weaknesses and how to work with them.

And now, on the eve of 42, how is it going? Well, the year began by moving out of London for the last time, after all those formative phases spent there, the next one begins in Oxfordshire. I can't wait to see what the next 7 years bring!

Sophie x

1980s Sophie Harpley. How it started...