Sep 2024
Inspiration can arrive from almost anything around me.
A tree at the gate. A small change in light. The arrangement within a flower. A conversation that remains in my thoughts.
Something familiar that suddenly asks to be seen again.
What draws me towards these encounters is often difficult to name. Before there is an idea for a painting, there is a feeling of significance. Something holds my attention, and I want to understand why.
That feeling is an important beginning within my practice.
I have come to recognise that inspiration involves a relationship between what I encounter and what I am able to notice. The world offers more than I can attend to at once. My questions, memories and inward state affect what comes forward.
Sometimes the smallest detail becomes the most expansive.
Looking into the centre of a flower, I can follow a recurring arrangement across its surface. My eye moves between the individual forms and the structure they create together. I become aware of how much remains to be seen within something I thought I already knew.
That movement between recognition and discovery feels close to painting.
The things that inspire me do not always appear as recognisable subjects in the finished work. A tree may leave behind a sense of branching or shelter. An encounter may become a question about closeness. A natural pattern may lead me towards repetition, variation or the relationship between a part and a whole.
The work carries what the encounter has set in motion.
There is also a spiritual dimension to this attention. My faith gives depth to the way I experience the visible world. Through Alif and the sacred name Allah, my practice returns to questions of origin, presence and the limits of what can be represented. An ordinary encounter can lead towards a question much larger than its immediate appearance.
I want to remain careful with that movement. The feeling an encounter creates in me is personal. It does not explain everything about the thing itself. A tree has an existence beyond the meanings I find in it. A flower continues its life beyond the pattern that captivates my eye.
Respecting that distance is part of looking.
It allows wonder to coexist with humility. I can be moved without claiming to understand completely. I can follow a connection while allowing some part of it to remain unknown.
This is why I keep looking around me. Familiar places continue to offer new questions. Something I pass every day can become a beginning when I give it sustained attention.
The world enters my work through these encounters. Painting gives me a way to stay with them, to follow what they awaken, and to discover what their presence may ask of me.
