As summer draws to a close here in Wales, a quiet melancholy settles in. It’s not the fading of light or the end of warmth that stirs it, but something less defined. I’ve never felt particularly aligned with summer. Winter, with its stillness and introspection, has always held a deeper pull.
And yet, this turning feels like an ending, one that carries more weight than usual.
There is a quiet rhythm to making art, a steady pulse that mirrors the flow of time itself. In the studio, brush in hand, the world softens its edges. The noise recedes. There is only surface, pigment, and the slow unfolding of form. This is not therapy, not an attempt to fix or explain, but rather a way of being with what is. Through the act of painting, we lean into the unknown with open hands, finding not answers, but orientation. The canvas becomes a horizon, not a destination.
Sometimes I find myself counting.
On walks, I count my paces. When waiting, I count the seconds, even if I do not mean to. Perhaps it is a way of holding onto time, of measuring something that cannot truly be measured. In the studio, this instinct emerges again in the repetition of mark-making. The same gesture, over and over. A rhythm that speaks not of control, but of presence.
Hope does not announce itself.
It lingers in these small, almost imperceptible acts, the layering of whites, the quiet confidence of returning to a motif. In these acts, the anxious mind is given space to rest, not by escaping reality, but by expanding its view.
In painting, I often find myself confronting the vastness of time, not in the sweep of history, but in the present moment stretching out beyond the my human edges. There is something deeply grounding in this, realising that the marks I make are part of a larger continuum, drawn forward into a future I cannot see.
Each work is both ephemeral and enduring. It may disappear, fade, crack, or be lost, but the act of making remains. It is an offering to the void. A silent affirmation that we are here.
This is something I’m exploring in my new series of paintings. Each canvas begins as a warm, earthy brown, the colour of ground and rest. Over this, I lay down veils of white, thin washes that settle unevenly across the surface. Then come the marks, large, assertive dashes made with force and intent. They cut through the stillness, not delicate, but physical, almost aggressive. There is no attempt to soothe. Instead, the repetition becomes a raw form of engagement, a way of asserting presence in the face of the void. The white does not cover so much as it confronts, and the surface becomes a field of tension, between concealment and insistence, between erasure and declaration. In this, I find a different kind of hope.
Not gentle, but resolute.
A hope that continues to make its mark, even when nothing is certain.