My painting is an attempt to create a quiet, welcoming space for reflection, through the use of color and movement. I try to express how colors feel, and how I respond to them

Process

Inspiration comes in a flash, perhaps when seeing flowers covering a coastal moor, and in a second I can see what I should do, and how a painting should feel.

From there, everything slows down.

I carefully plan and calculate how the form will fit onto a canvas, and then start making colors and testing them together to make sure I get exactly what I see in my mind. This takes time, and I spend some days just mixing colors and experimenting.

Creating colors is hugely important to me, I carefully mix them so I get just the right tone and emotion.

The process of painting is purposefully slow and methodical. Over time my processes evolve, usually adding complexity, with the aim of getting things just right. Painting for me is a slow, calm and careful experience, always focusing on small details. As I’ve developed as a painter, this has encouraged patience in me, as there is no way to rush the process. I only paint what I really want to, as it takes weeks of slow, sometimes tedious, work to bring it to life. The more patient and careful I can be, the better the painting will be. I feel that the calm, methodical process is an integral part of the paintings. I hope that the colors and structures of the work invite a slowing down in the viewer too.

The experience of painting for me is one where time moves at its correct speed. Where much of the digital world, to me, seems rushed and full of reaction, the process of painting is considered and reflective. I want this to come through in the work I create.

I enjoy sharing my work, but it does pain me somewhat that people often see it via screens. Photographs can’t accurately portray the colors I care so deeply about creating, and the scale of a painting to me is intrinsic to its effect. When face to face with a painting, you can feel properly what was intended, and see the work that went into creating it. Little of this experience comes through a screen.

When a painting is successful, it should quietly project a sense of calm, and peace.

Inspiration

My inspiration most often comes from nature. When I’m in the country, or especially the forest, my eyes feel at peace, and I feel I can see more colors, shade, more subtlety than in other places. Perhaps it’s the same for everyone. 

With my painting, I am trying to express the experience I have of color in the world. I was drawn towards abstract forms, as to me it’s cleanest way of expressing emotion through color and form. I’m trying to get to the response and reflection that colors provoke in us, free of the “noise” of representation (I have nothing against figurative art, it can be wonderful, it’s just not what I want to do).

When I use lines, spaced apart, it is to give the colors a bit of space to breathe. I know that next to one another they can sometimes provoke a strong response in the eye, and I want to quieten that down, to let the colors become gentle. The colors will still have an effect one one another, but it’s less intense.

Bridget Riley is one of my favorite artists, alongside Agnes Martin, and Pablo Palazuelo. To me, all three achieved a wonderful sense of peace and reflection in their work as it developed, and I find that inspiring. The broad projects of the abstract expressionists, and perhaps the impressionists before them, both concerned with how we experience light and color, are closest to what I think I am trying to do with my painting.

History

I have painted since I was a child, but did not find a direction for it until after my studies, in 2001. I had a feeling I was chasing, but did not know I would express it. It took me a few years to settle on a visual language that allowed me the freedom to paint what I wanted, and since that time I have been continuously learning to express myself through this abstract language of lines and color.

I started to show my work in group exhibitions from 2011, working up to a small solo show at the UntitledBCN gallery in 2016. Shorly after this I experienced a kind of creative block, or at least was struggling to paint what I wanted, but by 2020 I found my rhythm and creative streak again, and have been working consistently since then in my shared studio in Poble Sec, Barcelona.

I was born in the UK, and have lived in Barcelona since 2005.