The Story Behind The Beginning of Her Becoming

The Beginning of Her Becoming is both the title of one of Joanna Blair’s major paintings and the name of her current body of work.

At the centre of the collection is the idea of a woman standing at the threshold of change — not in a dramatic or obvious way, but in the breath-held moment before life begins to open.

This is the emotional territory Joanna often returns to in her work: the interior moment. The private turning point. The place where beauty, memory and self-recognition begin to gather.

The series forms part of Joanna’s larger visual and literary world, connected to her Substack story The Turning Point. In this world, paintings and fiction unfold alongside one another. Characters, objects, flowers, interiors and symbolic details move between the written story and the painted works, creating a collection that is not only visual but deeply atmospheric.

Each painting in The Beginning of Her Becoming carries its own symbolic language. Doves, florals, pearls, hidden keys, gold and gesture all play a role. The figures are not simply portraits; they are emotional states. They represent becoming, softness, strength, longing, renewal and the quiet dignity of a woman beginning to remember herself.

The title itself is important.

It does not suggest arrival. It does not suggest that transformation is complete. Instead, it honours the beginning — that delicate, powerful moment when something within a person starts to shift.

For Joanna, this is where much of the beauty lies.

There is a particular tenderness in the beginning of becoming. It is often uncertain. It may not yet be visible to the outside world. But internally, something has already changed. The woman is no longer entirely who she was, even if she has not yet fully stepped into who she is becoming.

That is the feeling Joanna seeks to paint.

Not perfection.
Not performance.
Not youth.

But awakening.

The Beginning of Her Becoming is a collection about beauty as a form of renewal. It is about the grace of inner change, the symbolism of objects and flowers, and the quiet power of recognising that what you are becoming may have been within you all along.