Mar 2023

When I look at nature, I find myself thinking about how easily we place ourselves outside it.

We speak of visiting nature, escaping into it, bringing it into our homes. These expressions suggest a distance. Yet the body looking at a tree belongs to the same living world as the tree itself. Breath makes this relationship immediate. What seems separate is already in exchange.

This recognition sits close to the foundation of my practice.

A grain of sand, a leaf, a human being: their differences matter. Each has a particular existence, a particular relationship with its surroundings. My understanding of oneness allows these differences to remain. It asks how each belongs within something larger.

Through painting, I return to this question of belonging. A form occupies its own place, yet its presence changes the space around it. A line meets another line. An interval becomes significant because of what stands beside it. The whole emerges through these relationships.

Nature also complicates what I wish to believe. It contains damage, struggle and loss alongside growth and mutual dependence. Looking closely requires me to remain attentive to all of it.

Perhaps this is where my inquiry begins: with the willingness to recognise that I participate in the world I am trying to understand.

What I observe is also what sustains me.