Process
Built slowly, on purpose.
My paintings begin without a fixed conclusion. I build up layers of paint, medium, and texture, then step back, revise, and respond to what the painting needs next. Some works resolve in months. Most take years.
Texture is not decoration. It is content. It holds the decisions, the interruptions, the corrections, the recoveries — and the time. Every layer leaves evidence even when it is buried, and that visible and invisible history is where the work actually lives.
Photography taught me the patience for it. I grew up in our family's commercial studio and darkroom, where an image was made by eye and hand and you waited for it to appear. Painting let me build rather than capture.
- 01
A start, not a plan
A compositional beginning — blobs from the tube, a putty knife, a sponge. No finished image in mind. The painting has not told me what it is yet.
- 02
Layering
Acrylic, oil, modelling medium, foil, and mixed media, worked to blend or to stand alone, leaving negative space where the surface asks for it.
- 03
Drying and waiting
The slowest part, and the one the darkroom taught me. You wait for the image to reveal itself. You cannot rush a print and you cannot rush a surface.
- 04
Sanding back
Scraping and sanding until earlier decisions poke through. What comes back up is often better than what I put down — the happy accidents live here.
- 05
Relayering and revision
Rebuild over what was removed. Some works cycle through this dozens of times across three to seven years. Weight took one hundred layers.
- 06
Final colour and texture
The last adjustments are about weight — of colour, of depth, of lightplay across the room the painting will live in.
- 07
Titling
The title comes last, after the painting has earned it. Blanche, Weight, Rabbit, Jazz — none of them were named at the start.