Oct 2025

Details, details and details.

I can remain with a small part of something for a long time. An edge within an edge. A slight turn in a recurring form. A variation in colour so subtle that it becomes visible only after looking again.

Each detail changes my understanding of the whole.

From a distance, a surface may appear resolved. Closer, it begins to reveal its particularities. What seemed uniform contains variation. What seemed simple carries decisions, irregularities and traces of becoming.

I am drawn to this change in perception because it asks something of me. I must give up the comfort of believing that the first impression is sufficient.

Within my practice, detail is a form of inquiry. It allows me to examine how a larger experience is created through small relationships. A narrow interval can change the rhythm of a painting. A modest variation can keep repetition alive. One interruption can make an entire structure newly visible.

This attention also carries an ethical significance for me.

We often encounter people through broad categories before we encounter their particular lives. We recognise a group, a nationality, a belief or an appearance, and assume we know more than we do. Attention to detail asks us to stay beyond that first recognition.

What have I overlooked? What particular history is present here? What changes when I look more carefully?

I want to bring that patience into the experience of my work.

Yet closeness is only one part of seeing. A detail belongs within relationships that can disappear when the eye remains too near. I need to move between distances, allowing the particular and the whole to inform each other.

This movement keeps the inquiry open.

I look closely enough to discover difference, then step back to consider how it belongs. The painting changes through both encounters.

There is always another detail. The question is what kind of attention I am willing to give it.