Why I Started Colorwell: Living Well in the Age of AI

There is a question I keep returning to, quietly, in the background of everything I do.

What does it mean to live well — as a human — when the world is changing this fast?

I am not afraid of technology. I work as a product designer. But somewhere in the middle of last year, I began to feel a kind of pressure that was even worse than during COVID. The pace of AI development, the arrival of ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, the sense that everything is accelerating — and with it, a subtle anxiety: what is mine to do? What is distinctly, irreducibly human?

I tried the things you're supposed to try. Personal development books. Meditation apps. Journaling. They helped, but something was still missing. Not a technique. A meaning. Something to make with my own hands, in my own time, that no algorithm could replicate or improve.

So I started painting.

And then, almost by accident, I started inviting friends to paint with me.

What I noticed in the room

In every workshop, something happens that I have not been able to fully explain — only observe.

People arrive carrying the week. You can see it in how they hold their shoulders, how they reach for their phones before they've even sat down. And then, slowly, something shifts. The brush touches the paper. The water moves. The colour blooms in ways you didn't plan.

An hour passes. It feels like ten minutes.

At the end of every workshop, people tell me they can't believe what they created. They look at their cherry blossom or their summer flower or their wash of forest colours, and something in them settles. It's not pride exactly — it's more like quiet satisfaction. Like something that was missing has been briefly, gently found.

What I've come to understand is that this is what psychologists call flow — the rare state where attention is fully given to one thing, time dissolves, and the self goes quiet. It happens in music, in sport, in deep conversation. And it happens, reliably, when you put a paintbrush in someone's hand and ask them to pay attention to colour.

It rarely happens in our modern work environments. It rarely happens in our private lives either — not with phones nearby, not with notifications arriving every few minutes, not with the low hum of everything demanding our attention at once.

That is what Colorwell is for: creating a space where we can rediscover presence, possibility, and what it means to be deeply and completely human — in a rapidly changing world.

Peonies — May 17, Oodi Helsinki

📅 Sunday, 17, May
🕑 13:30–15:30
📍 Oodi Library, Helsinki

You’ll leave with:

– 3-4 finished watercolour paintings
– A clearer understanding of colour layering, blending wet-on-wet techniques.
– Practical techniques you can reuse at home
– A calmer, steadier feeling than when you arrived

✔ Fully guided, step by step
✔ All materials provided
✔ Suitable for beginners and experienced painters
✔ 12 people group, unhurried pace

This May, we're painting peonies.

Not because peonies are fashionable — though they are. Because they are extravagant in the best possible way. They take up space. They are unapologetically full. And painting them asks you to be generous with colour, loose with control, present with the whole layered softness of them.

It is a two-hour session. Fully guided. All materials provided. Twelve people, an unhurried pace, and a room where your phone can rest.

If you have been meaning to try something like this — this is the month.

Registration for Peonies

This workshop is for participants aged 18 and over. I 15€ /per person material fee

These pilot sessions are our way of saying thank you to the people who've been part of Colorwell from the beginning. There's no session fee — just a small €15 materials contribution to cover your supplies. Everything else is on us.