Hello, and welcome to The Painted Presence. I’m Effy Wild and as with MOST of my creations, this one was born out of equal parts desperation and inspiration.

Let me explain.

In early October of 2025, I had a retinal detachment in the only good eye I have left, and as you can imagine that sent me into a bit of a spiral. I’ve had surgery, and the detachment has been repaired, but while I recovered, I needed to retrain my brain to stop seeing all the artifacts (the scar, the floaters, etc.) that were crowding my field of vision. The very best way to do that is to use your eyes as you normally would, but with breaks.

Ten minutes is about the right amount of time to be focusing on something during this “retraining” period, and that, my loves, is how The Painted Presence Project was born.

What It Is

The Painted Present Project is a thirty day challenge wherein I will paint *in silence* on the same substrate for thirty days in November of 2025.

Every day, I’ll float into my studio with a cup of tea, light a candle, and make some marks for ten minutes. No more, no less. And because I am a neurospicy person who has difficulty with silence, I’ve decided to go the extra mile with this and do this *in silence*.

This site will start its life as a record of that experience. After the experiment is over? Who knows what it will become.

Folks who are in my classes over on Into The Wild (my teaching network) or Patreon are getting video content every day throughout the course of this challenge. Folks who are subscribed to my YouTube channel will be getting video updates weekly or so. There may be stuff going up on TikTok. There will definitely be posts going up on Instagram. 

If you are up for a challenge and you want to join me, I’ve got you, fam! Here’s the project PDF which contains everything you need to know to join in.

Find all The Painted Presence Project Studio Diaries Posts Below