Jun 2024

There is a feeling I return to whenever I make art: that our differences belong within our connection.

I find it in the world around me. In the particular shape of a leaf, in the many forms that gather within a flower, in the distinct gestures of people moving through the same place. Each presence has its own character. Together, they create relationships that could not exist if everything were alike.

This is what I mean when I say, “We are all connected. We are all one.”

For me, oneness allows individuality to remain fully present. It asks us to consider how a life can be particular and still belong; how another person’s difference can expand our understanding rather than threaten it.

I often wish I could share the feeling behind this thought as directly as I experience it. There is a tenderness in recognising another being as part of the world to which we also belong. It changes the quality of attention. We become more curious about what we do not yet understand, more careful with what is vulnerable, more aware that our actions reach beyond ourselves.

My paintings emerge from this desire to make connection felt.

Within a work, each form acquires meaning through its relationships. A mark changes the space beside it. A recurring gesture holds its own variations. Colour can bring elements together while allowing their distinctions to remain visible. The painting becomes a place in which I can consider how many presences might coexist.

This also keeps my own conviction open to examination. It is easy to speak about unity when faced with something beautiful. The more demanding question is how that understanding holds when faced with discomfort, disagreement or unfamiliarity.

Can I remain attentive when recognition is difficult? Can I acknowledge a difference without immediately assigning it a lesser value? Can belonging include what I have not learned to understand?

These questions matter to the foundation of my practice. They bring the idea of connection into the way we look, respond and live.

I do not expect everyone to see a painting through precisely the same lens. Each viewer arrives with memories, beliefs and experiences that I cannot know. Yet I hope the work offers a moment in which the boundaries we take for granted become more open to questioning.

Perhaps someone will stay with a form they would usually overlook. Perhaps they will feel an unexpected familiarity. Perhaps a difference will become an invitation to look more closely.

That possibility is part of why I continue to make.

I want to create work in which individuality has room, relationship has presence, and belonging can be felt before it is fully explained.