Apr 2026

A metallic passage asks me to move around the work. From one position, it catches the light. From another, it becomes quieter and allows the surrounding colour to come forward. The surface changes as I change my position.

Texture makes this especially noticeable. Light touches a raised area differently from a recess. A small amount of reflective material can become prominent where the surface lifts, while another passage remains subdued. I have to consider those changes when deciding how much to add.

In the studio, looking from different angles becomes part of the work itself. I want to understand how the reflective areas sit within the whole painting and whether they hold their place as the light shifts. The material asks for attention beyond a single, fixed view.

Jan 2026

Looking closely at another work can make me newly attentive to my own materials. I might linger over the edge of a form, the space around it, or the way a colour changes across a surface. A reproduction gives me a place to begin looking, while also reminding me that scale and texture extend beyond what an image can convey.

I carry that attention back to the studio. It can make me reconsider an area I had passed over or notice a relationship that needs more time. What stays with me is often a particular question about making: how a transition holds together, or how little a surface needs to remain active.

Across the mediums I use, this exchange remains valuable. Looking sharpens my attention. Working gives me a way to test what that attention has opened.

Dec 2025

I see vastness in black. Looking into it, I become aware of how much can exist within what first appears to be a single colour. Small changes in the surface begin to matter: a raised edge, a softer passage, a mark that becomes visible only as the light moves.

In the studio, this makes black a demanding colour to work with. I have to look closely at where it feels open and where it becomes too dense. The placement of a form can change the depth around it. Even a small interruption can alter how far the eye seems able to travel.

I want that depth to remain available to the viewer. A black surface can ask for time. As I work, I keep returning to the relationship between what the painting reveals immediately and what becomes perceptible through staying with it.

Oct 2025

There is a point in a working session when the colours begin to collect on my gloves. A smear crosses the palm. Paint gathers in the folds and dries around the fingertips. Looking down, I can see traces of the work beyond the surface I am painting.

The photograph holds something I value about the studio: the closeness of the body to the material. Painting involves handling tools, moving things aside and returning to the surface. Colour travels through those ordinary actions. The gloves carry marks I never composed, yet they retain the texture of the session.

I find these traces worth noticing. They bring me back to the physical labour within the work, to the contact and repeated movement that a finished painting may no longer disclose. For a moment, my hands hold another record of what has happened.

May 2024

A brush carries the evidence of how it meets a surface. Pressure spreads the bristles. A lighter movement lets gaps remain. As the paint begins to run out, the stroke changes, leaving broken edges and finer trails.

I pay attention to these differences because they give a mark its particular character. The direction of my hand matters, but so does the amount of paint and the resistance of the material beneath it. A stroke can arrive with more texture than I expected. That texture gives me something to respond to in the next movement.

There is a decision in how much of this evidence to keep. Smoothing an area can quiet it, while leaving the bristle marks visible preserves the movement that made it. I look at what the stroke contributes before deciding whether to return to it.

Sep 2023

On the working palette, colours sit beside one another before they have a place in the painting. A bright passage can look different next to a darker mixture. Traces from an earlier brushload can change a colour at its edge.

This stage holds its own kind of looking. I can attend to a mixture in a small amount, then consider what happens when it occupies more of the surface. The same colour may feel balanced in one proportion and overwhelming in another. Its neighbour changes it again.

I am interested in these adjustments before the composition settles. The palette gives room for a colour to remain a possibility. Some mixtures move into the work. Others stay behind as small tests, useful because they help me recognise what the painting needs when I return to it.

March 2023

Introducing red into The Search Within changed the way I approached the surface. The colour brought an immediacy that asked for a different kind of attention. A mark that felt quiet different.

I am interested in the range within it: the heat of a brighter one, and the places where the colour thins enough for the surface beneath to remain present. Those differences affect how I place the calligraphic forms and how much space I leave around them.

Working with red makes me attentive to intensity. I look for the point at which its presence supports the painting, while allowing quieter areas to hold their own.

Jan 2022

Sometimes I want to speak about a feeling before I have found the words for it.

Something around me catches my attention. I feel close to it, moved by it, or unexpectedly aware of my place beside it. Then comes the desire to share what has happened.

I reach for words such as connection, belonging, presence.

They are important words within my practice. Yet each encounter has its own quality, and I want to remain attentive to that particularity. The feeling beside the neem tree differs from the feeling of looking into a flower. Both matter.

Painting gives me another way to stay with these differences.

A line, a colour or an interval can allow an experience to develop before I decide what to call it. I can follow what is happening and discover where it leads.

I want my writing to allow that patience too.

Some thoughts need to remain close to their beginnings for a while.

Mar 2021

One line changes when another appears beside it.

Its direction becomes more noticeable. The distance between them begins to matter. What was a single gesture becomes a relationship.

I find something compelling in this small change.

The second line does not need to resemble the first. It can turn away, interrupt, approach or leave a wide interval. Each possibility creates a different way of being together.

Within my practice, these decisions carry questions that reach beyond the surface.

How much space allows a form to remain itself? When does closeness create ease, and when does it create pressure? What can difference contribute to the life of the whole?

Painting allows me to consider these questions through particular gestures.

I begin with what I can see: the lines, their edges, the space between them.

Then I look at what their meeting has made possible.

Jan 2021

Paper brings the work close to the hand.

I can hold a sheet, turn it, follow its edge. Before any mark is made, there is already something to attend to: its surface, its weight, the way light rests upon it.

I love this first encounter with the material.

Paper makes me aware that a gesture always meets something. The surface receives the mark according to its own qualities. What emerges belongs to that meeting.

There is a particular intimacy in working at this distance. A small trace can hold attention. A space left open can become significant. The edges remain nearby, reminding me of the scale within which I am making decisions.

Paper also brings image and language close together in my thoughts. A line might become a letter, a form, or a gesture followed by the eye.

I am drawn to the possibilities that remain between these readings.

The sheet is in my hands. The meaning is still taking shape.