Where Feeling Takes Form
I rarely begin with a plan. More often, a colour leads me in, and it is almost always blue.
Blue holds something of my orientation to the world. It is the colour of water, sky and openness; a colour that can hold both calm and immense depth. As a sailor, it is where I feel most at home, whether at sea or in silence. There is something spiritual in it for me: space, possibility, presence, and the sense that there is always more beyond what can be seen.
In the studio, I work through motion. I put on my salopettes, choose a song and begin. Music is central to my process. Each painting is inspired by a single track, which becomes its emotion and rhythm. I respond to the sound physically, allowing movement to guide the composition: standing, crouching, reaching, pushing paint across the surface in gestures that are improvised and visceral. The early stages are often raw. I am not trying to make something beautiful. I begin with the mess and allow the form to emerge through the act of making.
There is always more in the work than first meets the eye. I am less interested in ornament than in meaning. Symbols, memories and fragments of experience find their way into the paintings, sometimes deliberately and sometimes before I fully understand why they are there. I work in layers of paint, emotion and gesture until something settles. What begins as instinct gradually finds its own clarity.
My tools change with the rhythm of the work. Lately, I have been drawn to rollers, letting their weight carry pigment across the canvas in broad, uninterrupted sweeps. At other times, I return to my hands or to thick brushes. The method shifts, but the process remains physical and responsive, rooted in a desire to translate something felt into something visible.
If something here moves you in the way that water has always moved me, I would love for it to find a home with you.