caught up with artist Piper Maru over email this spring, while she was in New York in the midst of her latest show, BEGIN, again. I first came across her art last year, doomscrolling through the endless void of Instagram, and was struck by the fittingly strange nature of the work. To my surprise, I later found out she'd been showing at the Troubadour Gallery in London. Her practice has always lived between worlds - film, costume, ceramics, paint. Right now, it lives between London and New York.

I've been making art for as long as I can remember, it was always in my nature to create things from my imagination. I've been surrounded by hugely creative people my whole life, so I think it was inevitable I'd pursue art in some form. It was never a question of whether I'd do something creative, only which form. I wanted to be a film director until my late teens, then a set and costume designer. It's only recently that I've landed on "fine art". Even now, I'm never satisfied with just one form of making. I don't think I ever will be.

There's always been an air of the otherworldly and fantastical in my work, that's down to growing up on Studio Ghibli films, and a lifelong fascination with all things mysterious and magical. My current practice is less overtly magical than my earlier work, though it's still rooted in the surreal.

My last two exhibitions have focused on oil and acrylic painting, but privately I also work with ceramics, papier-mâché, and other materials to make three-dimensional pieces. I haven't shown that side publicly yet, but it's in the pipeline.

Growing up with parents in film and television industry, there was always a question of whether I'd go into that world myself. After school I went down the set and costume design route, and even though I've since moved away from it, it still heavily shapes what I make now.

I've always loved the idea of being immersed in a foreign world - that was part of what I was trying to do with Maru Objects, my homeware brand: creating items that belonged to a particular world of their own. I do a little of that in my paintings too, but I'm still drawn to push it further, more seriously, which is what my next venture is about.

It's a mix of both. Most of my ideas come from dreams or meditation, the place right before you fall asleep is a real well of inspiration. In stillness, the ideas come rushing forward. But once it's time to actually plan a piece, I'm quite meticulous. Right now I'm working with a lot of bodies in space, so the first idea is usually a body in a particular position. I take photos of myself or people I know in that shape, then work out composition and colour on my iPad. Once I'm happy with it, I project it onto a panel and trace it. After that point, very little is intuitive — unless I make a mistake I have to creatively fix.

I still use my iPad to sketch ideas, but I've moved away from making finished digital work. For years I was making almost everything on a screen – tattoo commissions, graphic design jobs, art prints I'd sell in batches. Digital art is so much fun because you can do things that are much harder, or impossible, by hand. But I got tired of staring at a screen all day, every day. There's something grounding about working with your hands, being physically connected to the thing you're making. It's honestly a spiritual practice, staring at a screen has never felt that way to me.

Painting demands more patience. There's no undo button. So the work I'm making now is a little simpler than before, though that won't last forever as I keep honing the skill and the patience. I do miss making more detailed work.

The show is called Begin Again. The work I've made over the last few years is much more personal than anything before it — it's an ode to my own search for joy. The title is a reminder, to myself and hopefully to others, that it's okay to start over. Again and again, if you need to.

Right now I'm obsessed with painting figures wearing masks. Sometimes it's unclear whether they're human-hybrids or simply masked, I like leaving that open. The masks represent the ones we all wear to present ourselves to the world: how we hide, perform, transform. I want to show our playful side, the importance of not taking ourselves too seriously. There's still a theatrical thread running through the work.

During Covid, I stepped away from film and theatre and launched a small business called Maru Objects, a limited-edition art, homeware, and games brand. I poured everything into it, and even though it was short-lived, I'm really proud of the branding and the pieces I made. I realised pretty quickly that running a product business wasn't actually what I wanted to do but the idea of making highly curated, one-of-a-kind objects has never left me.

Because I plan most pieces in advance, I usually know it's done when it matches the sketch closely enough. But beyond that, it's intuitive. There's always something more you could add, the question is whether it would actually improve the piece. There's real danger in adding too much.

I'm in the early stages of something I'm really excited about. I've spent years assisting other artists on mural projects, and now I want to start my own painting and prop-making services. It brings together painting, making, storytelling, and building environments — all the things I love most — so it feels like a natural next step. Still early days, but I'm excited to see where it goes.

Alongside that, and alongside my fine art practice, I've started leading an online women's group called The Creative Shift, a workshop helping women move past creative blocks and rebuild their relationship with their own creativity. I've run two groups so far, with more planned, and I'd love to take it in-person eventually.

Follow Piper Maru's work at @bpmarumaru and @pipermaru.art.