About Kate

The seed of Kate Happle Studio was planted over a decade ago. Although I didn't know it at the time, at the time I had far bigger things to worry about and plenty of them, but without that moment, I sometimes wonder whether I would be sitting here writing this to you now.

The moment came when I was sitting in my garden, in the middle of what I can only describe as the most frightening period of my life. The sun was shining on my face and I was taking deep breaths (again), to stay calm.

I was seriously ill. A virus that had overwhelmed me (probably due to burn out) had got into my nervous system and left me in a wheelchair. I was awaiting a diagnosis nobody could make clearly, and a future nobody could predict. And in the middle of all that uncertainty, I had a thought. A thought so clear it almost felt like someone said it aloud.

I will be absolutely fine — however this all turns out — as long as I can still use my hands to create art.

The reason that moment stopped me in my tracks, is that at the time I thought it, I wasn't actually an artist at all. Not a practicing one. I could count on one hand the amount of times I'd picked up an art material for myself (and not the children) over the previous ten years. Yet despite that, I felt instantly calmer.

The Backstory

I'd been a creative child — the kind who was always making something, always drawing or painting, writing or designing, dancing or singing a made up song to a questionable tune (music isn't my strongest creative quality!). And then somewhere around seventeen, creativity and I parted ways. Like I said, I'd barely picked up a paintbrush in years. Yet there was always a quiet calling inside me back to it, however I almost always ignored it, it was juvenile, I was an adult woman now, the time for painting and dancing, singing and writing had past. I had serious things to get on with. 

Because I was busy. Very bust. I was a full-time working mother. I was doing everything right. I had the career, the house, the family, and the long list of responsibilities that always seemed more urgent than the thing my heart kept quietly asking for. I had absorbed, somewhere along the way, the idea that carving out time for something as indulgent as art was not what responsible women did. Responsible women finished everything else first. Showed up for their kids, kept on top of admin and bills, went shopping, cleaned, stood at the side of sports fields in the cold, worked extra hours to get the job done after the kids went to sleep. 

I was very good at finishing everything else first. Putting everything else first. Putting everyone first, putting everyone ahead of me.

The Turning Point

When the illness came, it came hard and fast and with little warning. Suddenly all the noise between me and my inner voice had been stripped away. I couldn't go to work, couldn't shop or clean. Suddenly all the noise that had kept me from hearing myself clearly had quietened. And what I heard, sitting in that garden with the sun on my face and genuine uncertainty about my future sitting alongside me, was unmistakable.

I'd been treating creativity as optional to that point. A nice to have. The icing on the cake. But it wasn't true. Creativity wasn't optional for me. Isn't optional for me. It isn't a hobby to get round to eventually. It is, as it turned out, who I am.

I'd like to tell you what followed was a dramatic transformation, but it wasn't. Recovery was slow and very non-linear, and my creative journey mirrored it.

I remember asking my husband to get me a pencil and paper and drawing a still life like we used to at school (because I had absolutely no idea what else to do that was artistic!). Months later I found my mum's old watercolours at the back of her cupboard and I played with them on the dining room table. I even bought some cheap ones of my own, used them a handful of times, and watched them find their way into a cupboard of my own. Over time I kept dabbling. at times making good progress, buying more supplies, at others slowing to a stop, because, life. Because, energy. Because, time. Because, I wasn't getting anywhere very quickly. 

Despite everything, despite knowing with absolute clarity that creativity had supported my recovery, reduced my anxiety, made me more present and more myself, I still repeatedly found ways to push it away. Still found the excuses. Endless excuses. Still put it last.

The Journey

My path to a consistent creative practice has been slow, honest and at times genuinely hard. Honestly, for something that's suppose to bring joy, it's also brought me a lot of stress and heartache.

It's taken courage to show up when work and life have exhausted me.

Courage to keep going when everything I've made looks rubbish to me.

Courage to believe that improvement is coming even when the evidence is thin.

Courage to carve out time despite the guilt that doing something for myself might make me a bad mother, wife, daughter, friend — insert anything else on the planet here (mostly related to being a woman!).

Courage to believe that I am an artist, because I make art. And that's enough.

I recognise those feelings because I've lived all of them. The burst of enthusiasm followed by weeks of nothing. The session that ended in disappointment. The comparison spiral. The supplies bought and never opened. The practice that somehow never quite stuck, however much I wanted it to.

I was, at different points in my journey, every single one of the creative archetypes I now write about. The Dreamer. The Waiter. The Critic. The Ghoster, The Seeker. I've lived inside all of them. And I've found my way through all of them, slowly, not all at once, and with plenty of backward steps along the way.

What I've Learned

Three things changed everything for me.

The first was understanding that consistency doesn't require long sessions or perfect conditions. It requires small, regular, low-pressure contact with the work. I am the best version of myself if I've made some kind of mark on some kind of surface in the last twenty-four hours. It can be two minutes or two hours. Both count.

The second was learning to stay in the conversation with my work rather than stepping outside of it to judge what I'd made. My inner critic doesn't evaluate objectively. It never does. Learning to take joy in the process, to experiment as a habit and look at what I've created with curiosity rather than judgement, has changed everything about my relationship to the practice.

The third was understanding that my creative identity: the restless, multipassionate, can't-stay-in-one-lane creative who loved too many things to commit to any of them. wasn't a flaw. It's not an accident., or a cruel mistake (which at times it has very much felt!). It is the most genuinely creative thing about me. When I stopped trying to fix it and started working with it, true transformation happened not just in me and my relationship to my work, but in my level of output and progression as a creative.

These three realisations have since become the Three C Creative Framework — Creative Consistency, Creative Confidence, and Creative Voice. The map I wish I'd had years earlier. The one I still use right now, every single day. 

Who Am I?

I'm Kate (you probably got that by now), I'm a qualified mindset and wellness coach, an artist with over a decade of self-directed learning behind me, and a working mother of two, who paints to podcasts (preferably funny ones), runs on Thai sweet chilli sensations crisps, and has an extremely embarrassing reality TV guilty pleasure.

The combination of mindset coaching and artistic practice isn't an accident, it's the whole point, it's the thing I've realised I can share that will help other creatives like me the most. The inner game and the outer game of creativity are inseparable. You can't solve a confidence problem with a technique course. You can't solve a consistency problem with a better brush. Understanding which problem is actually yours — and what it actually needs — is where everything begins.

I built Kate Happle Studio so you don't have to take as long as I did to find your way through. It started as a seed the moment that thought popped into my head, and took over a decade to unfurl to where I am today. 

What Is Kate Happle Studio?

Kate Happle Studio creates courses and resources for creative women who want to build a consistent, joyful, sustainable creative practice, and finally make it stick.

Everything here is built on the Three C Creative Framework: Creative Consistency, Creative Confidence and Creative Voice. Three stages. Three distinct problems. One coherent journey from wherever you are now to a creative practice that is entirely, unmistakably yours.

It all starts with understanding your pattern.

Five honest descriptions of the patterns that block creative women. Find the one that feels like you, and find out exactly where your path forward begins. (This link takes you to a free webpage on my website.)