Reflecting on the Year Past: How Your Art Evolved in 2025

I keep a stack of sketchbooks on a shelf in my studio, and every December I pull them down and start flipping through. I always think it’s going to be quick, and it never is. I get pulled back into whatever I was working through at the time…what I was trying, what felt like it was working, what I abandoned halfway through. If you’ve ever gone back through your own work like that, you know what I mean. Things that felt scattered start to connect. You can see where your attention shifted, what you kept coming back to, what quietly dropped off without you really noticing.

That’s the part of reflection that feels useful to me. Not looking back just to look back, but actually seeing what happened over the course of the year.

Because this past year…there was a lot moving around. New tools, shifting expectations, weird rhythms with showing and sharing work. Even just the day to day of making felt a little inconsistent at times. And still, you kept showing up to it in whatever way you could. That’s worth acknowledging before you do anything else with it.

When I start thinking about reflection, I usually begin in a really simple place. I just try to get everything in front of me. Finished pieces, unfinished ones, things I forgot about completely. When it’s all scattered, it’s hard to see anything clearly. When it’s together, patterns show up pretty quickly. You start to notice repetition, shifts in how you’re working, things that felt like one-offs but actually weren’t.

You also start to notice your reactions, which I think is just as important. There’s always work that still feels solid and work that you look at and think…eh. That doesn’t mean it’s bad. It usually just means you’ve moved. Your taste changed a little, your priorities shifted, something about how you approach the work is different now. That’s information you don’t really get unless you take the time to look.

When you start thinking through the year as a timeline, that’s where it gets even clearer. What you were focused on at the beginning of the year compared to now is almost never the same. Even if you had a plan, it probably changed along the way. You followed something else, even if you didn’t fully realize it at the time. That’s not a problem to fix. It’s just part of how a practice moves. Once you see it, you get to decide what you want to keep going with and what you don’t.

And it’s never just about the work itself. It’s everything around it too. What you were watching, reading, listening to…who you were talking to, what you were paying attention to. Those things show up in the work whether you’re trying to track them or not. Sometimes one small thing shifts everything. When you start to connect those dots, you get a better sense of what actually feeds your work instead of just guessing.

The same thing goes for what was happening in your life alongside the work. Energy levels, stress, time, all of it leaves a mark. You might see stretches where your work tightened up or loosened, where you pulled back or pushed forward. When you look at it like that, it stops feeling like you were “off” and starts reading more like a response. You can see what helped you keep going and what made it harder. That’s useful in a very real way when you hit those stretches again.

There’s also the practical side of it, which I know isn’t always the most exciting, but it tells you things you can’t ignore. How much you made, what sold, what didn’t, what actually felt sustainable. When you put that next to how the work felt to make, it gives you a much clearer picture of what’s working for you and what isn’t. It’s not about overanalyzing it. It’s just about being honest with what’s there.

I usually end up doing some version of a full reset at the end of the year. I pull everything out, go through it, make notes as I go. Nothing formal, just quick thoughts. Then I step back and read through it all at once. It turns into a kind of snapshot of the year that’s a lot more honest than what I would remember off the top of my head. You can see what kept showing up, what never really landed, what shifted halfway through.

Some things just don’t work out the way you expected them to. When you come back to them later, it’s usually easier to see why. Maybe you didn’t have the time you thought you would, or the idea didn’t hold your attention, or it just wasn’t the right moment for it. Once you see that, it’s easier to decide whether it’s something you want to try again or something you’re done with.

At the same time, there’s a lot of progress that doesn’t look like much from the outside. Finishing something you used to avoid. Setting a boundary that protects your time. Finding a way of working that feels more natural. Those things don’t always show up as finished pieces, but they change how your whole practice feels. And they tend to stick.

You can also see where things have gotten easier. What takes less time now, what you don’t have to overthink as much, what feels more automatic. That opens up space, whether you use it to make more work or just to work in a way that feels a little less heavy.

And then there’s the question I keep coming back to…what actually held your attention. Not what performed well or what you thought you should be doing, but what you wanted to stay with. That’s usually where something is worth following a little further, even if it doesn’t fully make sense yet.

If you’re sharing your work online, this is a good moment to look at that too without getting pulled into it. What felt like it connected, what felt like it drained your energy, what actually felt manageable alongside your practice. You don’t need to be everywhere. You just need something that works for you.

Same with everything around the work. Pricing, collaborations, all of it. When you look at it outside of the moment, it’s easier to see what felt balanced and what didn’t. Most of the time, you don’t need to overhaul anything. It’s just small adjustments that bring things back into alignment.

By the time you’ve sat with all of this for a bit, you usually already know what direction you want to move in next. Not in a fully mapped out way, just a sense of where your attention is pulling you. That’s enough to start.

So if you haven’t done it yet, give yourself a little space for this. Pull your work together, take a look, and see what’s actually there. It’s a different kind of clarity than trying to plan everything from scratch. You’re working from something real instead of something hypothetical, and that tends to make the next step feel a lot more doable.