I have been thinking lately about how the smallest choices in the studio shape the work we see and feel. The way a piece of paper lies on a table. The way ink settles into a groove. The way a canvas waits for a mark that might arrive suddenly and I wanted to share a little of that process with you.
There is something about the spine of a sketchbook that feels too rigid, too resolved. A sketchbook asks for a story, a beginning and an end, each page carrying the weight of what came before and what must come next. I only ever use them when I am far from my studio, working in another country, sketching out in the open air. But as soon as I return home, the spines are broken and the pages set free.
I scatter loose sheets of paper around my table and tuck them carefully into the drawers of my plan chest, like leaves gathered in quiet drifts. They rest unbound by sequence or judgment. Here, I can let the marks come intuitively, raw, hesitant, defiant, unconcerned with whether they belong.
My press feels like an extension of this freedom. I carve into wood and score into acrylic sheets, building plates that hold my gestures in their grooves. The ink settles into these lines like memory into the grain. Rolling it on, wiping it back, I approach the plate as I would a canvas, erasing and rubbing, splashing and smudging until something true appears.
My smaller canvases hold this same spirit. I build up slow, weighty layers, then interrupt them with quick, graphic marks that feel almost reckless. These paintings are uninhibited by caution, unpredictable and immediate, carrying both the quiet depth of the under layers and the sudden urgency of a single gesture across the surface.
There is freedom in the impermanent, the unfinished, the stack of loose papers waiting in drawers, the press plates inked and wiped clean, the small canvases that refuse to settle. In this, I find my truest sketches, the ones that do not pretend to be anything but what they are: an imprint of thought and touch, unbound and unafraid.
When you see my paintings, know that they carry these fragile ghosts within them.