A Return to the Heart of My Work: Interiors

Clarity shaped by pause, deepened by grief, growth, and motherhood.

There’s a quiet clarity that’s been building in me.

A return—not to where I left off, but to where I truly belong.

Our interior is shaped by meaningful curation. Antiques with soul, textiles from fabric markets in Paris, and nods to nature come together through my design approach rooted in heritage and story.

In 2019, I married the French man I met while on vacation in London a few years before. In the weeks following our wedding, we moved from Dublin to Paris.

Until then, I’d been working in corporate consulting, first in the U.S., then in Dublin. The work gave me structure and challenge, but something in me longed for more. More feeling. More expression. More self.

I took a pause to listen. I applied to a master’s program in interior decoration at LISAA (L’Institut Supérieur des Arts Appliqués) in Paris, following the hope of rediscovering the creative freedom I knew as a child.

That year transformed me. It was more than a new city or course of study. It was a deeper transformation.

Interiors became a language I could speak without needing fluency in words.

I was still a beginner at French then, which made me more intentional in how I presented my designs as all of my coursework was in French. Everything slowed. Each word was thoughtfully learned and chosen. When vocabulary fell short, I turned to material and texture to express my ideas.

In that daily discomfort, I found a sort of freedom.

For me, interiors are a universal language. They speak of where we come from, who we’ve become, and what we’re still learning.

Living and designing mostly in French still feels expansive. Like opening a portal to my inner child, bypassing old filters and making room for authenticity.

I often return to the Bibliothèque des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, a sacred space introduced to me by my design history professor.

If Pinterest offers a world of digital inspiration, shaped by algorithms, ads, and trends, the Bibliothèque des Arts Décoratifs is its antithesis—tactile, quiet, sensorial.

The reading room at the Bibliothèque des Arts Décoratifs is lined with over 5,000 albums from the Maciet collection, an extraordinary archive of engravings, photographs, postcards, and documents, methodically gathered to trace the decorative arts, design, architecture, costume, and beyond.

Here, I’m grounded and connected to the soul of my work, rooting into a sense of belonging I hadn’t yet found until I began shaping spaces where my full self could be seen, felt, and reflected back.

In the midst of my studies, came 2020. The world quieted.

My interior designs, sketches, and paintings became a lifeline. A way to stay rooted in beauty and hope amid uncertainty.

Confined to our tiny Montmartre studio, I began sharing more regularly on Instagram, reaching out for connection that had suddenly disappeared.

To my surprise, my creativity resonated.

Clients and brands reached out, drawn not just to my interior designs, but to the soul they saw in my paintings. One project led to another: interior consults, antique sourcing, commissions, print collaborations, artist features, collections of wallpaper, textiles, clothing…

It was exciting. Affirming.

Over time, the current slowly shifted.

The painting work expanded, and I followed its flow without fully realizing how far I’d drifted from the deep interior work I loved.

Creativity in commerce breathes a delicate pulse. At times, that pulse felt like it was flickering—dimmed beneath the weight of an insatiable desire for more.

I began to miss the intimacy of interiors. The co-creation, the storied discoveries, the act of shaping space as a mirror of someone’s inner life.

Between 2020 and 2023, my creative work found its way into homes, collaborations, and partnerships. While I continued shaping interiors, my paintings began to speak the loudest. The pace quickened, and I sometimes lost touch with the rhythm I once held close.

I’m grateful for that chapter. For the trust, the visibility, the collaborations, the partnerships. Yet a part of me felt pulled away from what I loved most.

By 2023, I was on the brink of reimagining it all—my work, my rhythm, my tone. I began asking new questions about what I wanted to create next. What felt true.

Then I became pregnant and was soon diagnosed with HG (hyperemesis gravidarum), a severe pregnancy condition. For eight months, I was mostly bedridden and unable to eat or drink.

Life narrowed to nausea, hospital IVs, and a cocktail of medications that numbed me just enough to carry new life. My body demanded full surrender.

A few months after miraculously giving birth to a healthy, beautiful baby, in the edges of my own recovery, my mother was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer.

I found myself flying between countries with a newborn, becoming a mother an ocean away from my partner while also showing up as a daughter in ways I hadn’t known before.

I stepped away from public work.

But privately, I kept creating.

I wandered antique stores, studied cultural crafts and traditions, gathered textiles and paint samples, refined my interior eye, and collected fragments of my own becoming. These rituals held what I couldn’t yet name. Now they shape the foundation for what comes next.

Pieces gathered in a private season; antique textiles, paint tests, cultural notes, and a return to what feels most like home.

Now, I feel the return.

A coming home. Not just to myself, but to the work I’ve always loved.

I’m returning to interiors with renewed clarity. I’m gently shaping new offerings rooted in a slower, more focused pace, grown from all these seasons have carried.

These offerings bloom from a seed first planted during my interior design studies; one I’ve only recently come to articulate more clearly:

Beauty in interiors can transcend aesthetics. When rooted in story, interiors become a pathway to belonging.

This return feels soft. True.

It feels like home.

Thank you for being here and witnessing this unfolding. More soon.

With warmth and care,
Shana