Studio & Process

How I Work

I don’t experience creative “blocks” the way some artists describe them. Over the years, I’ve learned how to meet myself where I am. If I feel distracted, I ground myself by removing pressure: I tell myself I’ll paint for twenty minutes, with one colour, and see where it goes. One colour becomes another, then another. Before long, the painting takes over.

I paint in moments. My colour choices are intuitive, mixed on the spot and built in layers. No painting ever holds just one colour — there’s always a spectrum, the way real places are. Nature doesn’t obey colour schemes; that’s something humans impose. When I paint a lantern, a mountain, a sky, or a glass on a bar, I see a world of shifting tones, each one layered over instinct and experience.

My oil paintings take time. I don’t rush them. Some move quickly, others require space and distance. The hardest stage is often near the end, when the details are there but the feeling isn’t resolved. Sometimes I know immediately that a painting is finished; other times I need to look, wait, and return with fresh eyes. There’s truth in the idea that paintings are never finished, only abandoned — but I try to abandon them at the right moment.

When the work is truly finished, I varnish it with Gamvar, which deepens the colours and completes the piece.

Painting is only one part of my practice. The other part is looking — observing light, colour, people, and places with an artist’s attention. My art and my life are intertwined. In a way, I’m always working.

My early influences were Impressionists, Realists, and Expressionists — painters who understood that emotion could live in colour and mark-making. I spent about ten years making abstract work, and that history never left me. I still see abstraction in the rhythm of my compositions, the way I layer colour, and the expressive marks that sit beneath the representational surface.