We were lucky to catch up with Chris Moss recently and have shared our conversation below.

Chris , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Was there an experience or lesson you learned at a previous job that’s benefited your career afterwards?

During my corporate career, I always had jobs focused on serving others – supervising, coaching, training, developing soft skills. I’m a very calm person by nature, which naturally lends itself to thriving in what others perceive as stressful situations. The latter part of my corporate career saw me working in HR.

I’d just completed a Master’s in Human Resource Management, which covered all the expected basics of an HR qualification – employment law, performance reviews, handling issues – but the part that really stood out to me? Occupational Psychology. Understanding how people experience work, why they behave the way they do, and why wellbeing is such a crucial factor in performance. Even more fascinating? Emotional labour – the requirement to present emotions that don’t match how we feel inside, and the toll that takes over time.

As the years went by, I realised I’d been prioritising the wellbeing and development of others, but had started to neglect my own. I’d become the poster child of curated calm. Being the ‘calm one’ became my reputation – a badge of honour, even. I was the go-to person when something went wrong or when a difficult conversation needed to be had.

Art found me when I needed it most. A creative outlet where I could process all those bottled-up emotions. A place where I could just be. I grabbed it with both hands and haven’t let go since.

So, art has been a two-fold lesson for me: firstly, that understanding people is vital, and that serving others is a deeply human need. But secondly – and arguably more importantly – that we must also understand and serve ourselves.

My creative release gave me the space to reconnect with myself. To process everything I’d buried under the weight of years of emotional labour and responsibility. But it also gave me the clarity to realise how my work could help others. People could use my art as their own safe space – a moment of quiet amid the noise, to get lost in the layers, reconnect with what they’re feeling, and gently work through it.

The purpose remains the same: I still help people process emotions – I just do it with paint now.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’m Chris, an abstract artist from Cononley, North Yorkshire.

Art discovered me partly by chance — but probably also because it was always meant to. It all started two years ago, when I couldn’t find a canvas I liked for our hallway. After weeks of searching, I suddenly asked myself: “How hard would it be to create one myself?” Although I’d always been creative and loved drawing as a child, that side of me had been buried under years of high-pressure corporate life in HR — where, ironically, it can be dangerous to think creatively.

I had a week off after a particularly intense period of change management, so I took myself off to the local art shop, bought a canvas and some paint, and — without a clue what I was doing — unknowingly set in motion a journey of self-discovery.

I grabbed art with both hands and haven’t let go since. Every spare moment that wasn’t taken up by work or socialising became consumed with paint. I couldn’t stop. It was like a creative floodgate had opened.

In my HR career, my purpose was always to help others. I was a different kind of HR professional — less focused on policy and more interested in what makes people tick. Why people behave the way they do. How the context of their lives shapes their experiences. I was particularly attuned to the hidden toll of emotional labour — the kind where you smile through pressure, suppress your feelings, and ‘keep it professional’, no matter the cost.

That deep understanding of people and occupational psychology means I know just how much we all need moments of calm away from that weight of responsibility. We need places to pause, reconnect, feel something real, and process it — to make peace with ourselves, if you like.

Back then, I helped people process their emotions through conversation and coaching. Now, unexpectedly, I do it through art.

The work I create doesn’t just look good on someone’s wall — it holds space for how they feel. It listens without judgement. It offers a quiet moment to sit with ambiguity and let emotions surface in their own time.

Abstract art is powerful because it disrupts how we normally see. Figurative art is easy for our brains to file away — a face, a landscape, a moment captured. But abstract art invites feeling before meaning. You’re not told what to see. Instead, a colour, a line, a texture speaks directly to your emotions. It unlocks something. And in that moment, you’re free — free to explore, to reflect, to feel.

My work is intuitive — an outpouring of the subconscious, shaped by the years I spent suppressing my own emotions while navigating corporate life. Each piece holds a part of that emotional return. And while I don’t always know the full story while painting, I often discover its meaning later — when I pause, look back, and realise what was really being expressed at the time. In the same way I rediscovered my creativity, each piece and collection becomes an invitation for others to rediscover something in themselves.

That’s really why I do it — for the people who’ve spent years suppressing their own emotions, so they too can reconnect.

I create original abstract works on canvas and paper, offer bespoke commissions, and produce fine art prints — all designed to make this emotional reawakening more accessible. Journaling has also played a huge role in my journey, so I’ve reimagined my fine art designs into hardback journals, giving people a personal space to explore their own emotional worlds.

I’m proud that my art is born from honesty — and even prouder that it gives others permission to be honest too.

My art isn’t the solution. It’s the bridge — from where you are now, to where you want to be. And sometimes, all it takes is one quiet moment with a piece of art to remember what truly sets your soul on fire.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

One of the biggest lessons that art has taught me is the importance of prioritising my own wellbeing.

I spent years in a corporate HR role championing this for others — helping people understand emotional labour through the lens of occupational psychology — but oddly, I began doing the exact opposite when it came to myself.

I’ve always been a very calm person. Ridiculously calm, in fact. What I didn’t realise back then was that this made me the “go-to” person — the one who could calmly defuse situations that had everyone else swinging from the chandeliers. The one who could take a complex problem, break it down, and make sense of it.

Over time, I became the poster child for ‘curated calm’ — the one who could do it all, all while slowly unravelling beneath the surface. I fixed things that seemed unfixable, largely because I chose to understand why something had happened, rather than simply focusing on the outcome. But that kind of understanding requires time, energy, and a lot of emotional presence. It means creating space for people to express how they feel, and allowing them the dignity of a response.

The more you do that, the more it becomes your identity. A badge of honour you feel you have to live up to. And the cost of truly understanding people — especially when the same mistakes are made over and over — is that it wears you down. That’s when emotional autopilot kicks in. You become so weary from holding everyone else up that you start to disconnect. You go through the motions. You become stuck in a pattern you don’t even recognise as burnout.

I didn’t see it at the time, but I’d started to become a victim of the very thing I helped others understand: emotional labour.

Unlearning that autopilot — and choosing instead to reconnect with my own emotions — has been the most transformative part of this journey so far.

Because when you stop performing the role and start feeling again, that’s when you truly come back to life.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

Arlie Hochschild’s The Managed Heart introduced me to the concept of emotional labour — the idea that we’re constantly managing and performing emotions at work, and the toll that takes over time: emotional apathy, dissonance, even burnout. I first encountered this during my Master’s degree in Human Resource Management, and it struck such a chord that it’s shaped my entire career since. I built training around it, coached people through it, and created tools to help others process it. And yet, despite its profound impact, emotional labour remains something we rarely talk about in the workplace. It’s expected, but not understood — and certainly not supported in the way it should be.

My art has now become one of those tools. A way to help people process the burnout that comes from constantly faking ‘fine’. A daily opportunity to reconnect with how they actually feel underneath the performance.

Because I’ve always been fascinated by the way we experience the world through our emotions, I’ve naturally gravitated towards mindfulness and manifestation as tools for emotional processing and growth. Dr Jim Coty’s Mind Magic is a brilliant exploration of the neuroscience behind manifestation. It takes the concept out of the ‘woo-woo’ category and roots it in science, helping us understand how we can reprogramme our neural pathways to install more powerful belief systems. It’s not about wishful thinking — it’s about breaking out of habitual negative thought patterns, shifting into possibility, and actually believing in ourselves enough to do the work that leads to change.

I also regularly listen to podcasts by Mel Robbins and Jay Shetty. Both are incredible at helping people pause and reconnect with themselves. Their work centres on helping people create the conditions within themselves to live fuller, more aligned lives. And if you give yourself the time to listen — even just once — you’re guaranteed to walk away having learned something about yourself.

All of these resources speak to the same truth:
We become what we repeatedly believe.
Whether it’s through understanding emotional labour, reshaping our thought patterns, or reconnecting with how we feel — the path to healing starts with self-awareness, and the courage to actually feel.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://chrismossart.com/
• Instagram: @chrismoss_art
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/12JVoTMZ5z1/?mibextid=wwXIfr