About Margaret
I’ve Always Noticed
I have always noticed things.
As a child, I was drawn to the small details that were easy to miss — the way light shifted across a room, the shapes made by shadows, a change in someone’s expression, or the particular feeling of a place.
I didn’t have words for any of this then. I simply noticed.
Looking back, I think this way of paying attention has always been part of how I meet the world. I am curious about what sits quietly beneath the surface — things we may sense before we understand them, and ordinary moments that somehow stay with us.
Sometimes, nothing remarkable is happening at all.
And yet, when we pay attention, something changes.
Art as Attention
Art has been with me for as long as I can remember.
Over time, it became more than something I made. It became a way of paying attention — of looking more closely, staying with what I noticed, and giving form to things that were not always easy to put into words.
Through colour, texture, light and material, I could explore a feeling, an atmosphere, a memory, or simply something that caught my attention. I didn’t always need to know where it was leading. Often, curiosity was enough to begin.
Perhaps this is what I value most about making: it allows me to stay with a question without rushing towards an answer.
And sometimes, in the process of making, I begin to see something differently.
Losing and Returning
There was a time when I became less able to hear that quieter way of knowing.
Like many people, I became caught up in expectations, responsibilities, and ideas of who I thought I should be. Somewhere along the way, it became harder to tell which voices were mine.
Silence helped me find my way back.
During my first ten-day Vipassana meditation retreat, I began to pay attention in a different direction — inward. To breath, sensation, thought and emotion; to what was happening moment by moment without immediately needing to change or explain it.
Meditation gradually became part of my life, and over the years it has continued to shape the way I listen and pay attention.
Working with people through creative arts therapy, education and other forms of supportive practice opened another kind of attention — the attention that happens between people. I learned the value of listening, of being present, and of creating enough space for something to emerge without deciding beforehand what it should be.
These two directions of attention — inward and outward, towards ourselves and towards what is happening between us — continue to shape the way I live, create and connect today.
Creating the Conditions for Connection
I have become increasingly interested in what can happen when people are given time, attention and enough space to be present with themselves and with one another.
In the creative spaces I have held, making does not need to begin with an outcome. A table of materials, something gathered from nature, a conversation, or a simple invitation can be enough to begin.
People may notice different things, make in different ways, or arrive with very different experiences. What matters to me is not that we come to the same place, but that there is room for each person’s experience to be present.
Perhaps connection doesn’t come from having the same experience. It comes from being present to each other’s experience.
The Threads Came Together
For a long time, I thought of the different parts of my life as separate paths.
There was art and painting.
There was meditation and inner practice.
There was working with people.
Later, music became another way of giving form to stories, memories and things I wanted to understand.
Over time, these different threads stopped feeling separate.
I began to see that underneath them was the same curiosity: a desire to pay attention, to explore what moves us, and to understand the subtle ways we connect — with ourselves, with one another, with nature, and with the life unfolding around us.
Sometimes that exploration happens alone in the studio. Sometimes it begins with an ordinary moment I happen to notice. Sometimes a memory becomes a song. And sometimes it happens in the space between people — through making, sharing, listening, playing or simply being together.
I no longer feel the need to choose between these different parts of myself.
They are different ways of exploring the same world, and each continues to shape the others.
What I Bring With Me
Alongside my creative practice, I bring many years of experience in visual art, expressive arts therapy, education and creative work with people.
My background includes undergraduate and postgraduate study in fine art, with an MFA from RMIT University, as well as a Master of Expressive Arts Therapy from The University of Hong Kong. My work has taken place across educational and care settings, including supporting children and adults with additional needs.
These experiences have shaped not only what I know, but how I work:
with curiosity rather than assumption, with sensitivity to different ways of communicating and participating, and with an awareness that meaningful experiences cannot always be planned in advance.
Meditation and Reiki have also been part of my exploration of attention, presence and inner experience. I see them less as separate identities I need to hold, and more as experiences that have influenced the way I listen, relate and create.
What I bring into a space, then, is not one single discipline.
It is a way of working that has grown through making, learning, listening and being with people.
Meraki Soulight, Now
Meraki Soulight has gradually become a home for all of these threads.
It is where my art, music, curiosity, inner practice and experiences with people can meet — not as separate roles, but as different ways of creating, exploring and connecting.
At the heart of it is something simple:
I am interested in the moments that help us feel a little more connected — to ourselves, to one another, to nature, and to the life around us.
Some of these moments are quiet. A shift of light, a colour, a memory, a conversation, something ordinary that suddenly asks us to look again.
Others are things we create ourselves — through painting, music, imagination, play, or making something together.
Meraki Soulight is a space for both.
A place to make, notice, wonder and explore. A place where I can share what I am discovering, and create opportunities for others to experience something alongside me.
Sometimes we notice the magic already there.
Sometimes we create a little magic of our own.