On Art, Identity & Letting Work Lead: Olive & Ink November 2025
This letter was originally sent to Olive & Ink subscribers in November 2025. Olive & Ink is our monthly Snail Mail Club—handwritten letters, original art prints, and creative writing delivered to mailboxes around the world. Want to receive future envelopes? Subscribe.
Dear Creative,
In some cases, when you start becoming (and identifying yourself) as an artist, it can be easy to get trapped by that label. You start to believe that everything you make has to mean something about who you are or your beliefs. But this framework can be dangerous. When you're too focused on expressing yourself, you lose the ability of getting lost and curious in whatever you're making. Being a creative means learning to move between the self and the external world. To care deeply about what you make, but not mistake it for your whole identity. There's humility in letting the work lead you.
This month's print is an oil painting titled The Weight of a Butterfly by Karis Evans. Karis was my painting mentor for a time, and she's since become a dear friend. This piece visually explores the dichotomy of suspension and heaviness, inspired by the artist's experience of loss. How do you release what's fragile without losing what makes it beautiful?
The accompanying writing piece, Welcome to the Day my Heart Grew by Tyler Hutton, explores a different kind of weight: the sudden, impossible fullness of falling in love. Tyler, who is also a partner at CLBHUIS, writes with both humor and ache about the way our inner worlds expand when we let someone else in. His prose is a reminder that love, like art, reshapes us. It can make us softer, stranger, and perhaps more porous to the world.
Both pieces, in their own way, speak to the delicate balance between holding on and letting go, between self and surrender, between the weight of being and the lightness of becoming.
This month we also have a surprise addition to our Olive & Ink: a free ticket to our upcoming tarot exhibition and launch party on November 15th. It will feature original artwork from The Visionary's Tarot in the Posthoornkerk, a historic cathedral in Amsterdam. After over a year of work, I'm so excited to share what our community has created. If you can, come say hi, see the live works, and meet some of the incredible artists behind them.
Until then, here's to staying open, to getting lost, and to remembering that sometimes the most honest art is the kind that simply is.
Warmly,
Britt Broadwood
What else was in this month's envelope:
🎨 Print: The Weight of a Butterfly by Karis Evans
An oil painting exploring the dichotomy of suspension and heaviness, inspired by loss. How do you release what's fragile without losing what makes it beautiful?
✍️ Writing: Welcome to the Day my Heart Grew by Tyler Hutton
A reflection on the sudden, impossible fullness of falling in love, and how our inner worlds expand when we let someone else in.
🎟️ Bonus: Free ticket to The Visionary's Tarot exhibition and launch party (November 15, 2025, Posthoornkerk, Amsterdam)
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