As we know, being alone doesn’t (always) have to mean being lonely.

In fact, it can be damn right fulfilling, fun and exciting, as a new psychological study recently found.

The research, published in October in the Journal of Population Research, studied 6,675 people who lived alone at the beginning of the study in 1996, and then followed up on their living situation for the next six years. Intriguingly, the study found that those who were most likely to continue living alone were women, rather than men.

Discussing the results of the study, social psychologist Bella DePaulo wrote in Psychology Today: “It was as if once they got a taste of a place of their own, they found that they really liked it. They no longer wanted to find someone to live with, if they ever did.”

It is this joy of being single that one illustrator has set out to capture.

Mexico-based artist Idalia Candelas uses pencil, ink and watercolour to capture how a dose of solitude isn’t a bad thing.

“The theme of the loneliness has been recurring in my drawings,” she tells Mic. “Even though people try to avoid [it] [out of] fear, being in that situation is increasingly common in our society.”

“I like to show women who exist in solitude but do not suffer. They are not depressed or crying. Rather [they] are safe, exalting in the sense of enjoying the company of just herself.”

The series, titled Postmodern Loneliness, was first bound together and released as a book called Alone in 2016, when it went on to be a sellout success.

You can now buy the book on Amazon, but in the meantime, why not take a look at why her work took the internet by storm…

This piece was originally published in February 2016

Main image: Getty