The model is never an afterthought. I choose who I work with carefully, because the right person has to carry the emotional thread that has been running through the painting in my mind, sometimes for years.
When I’m ready, I spend a whole day with my model — taking photographs, moving them through different poses and angles, chasing the light. I take as many photographs as I can, knowing I’ll discard most of them. Then I edit. And edit again. I might spend several days going back and forth, narrowing down, before I find the one image that contains what I’ve been looking for.
And then I do something that surprises people: I convert it to black and white.
Colour, for me, is noise at this stage. Too many tones competing for attention, too many distractions pulling my eye away from what matters — the underlying structure of light and shadow. In black and white, I can read the tones clearly. That is all I need. It might not work for every painter, but for me it is non-negotiable.
VI. The Final Glaze
After all of that — the years of thinking, the research, the composition, the drawing, the long months of layering — there is one last stage, and it requires patience of a different kind. I glaze. Using a Damar glaze, I work carefully over the surface of the painting,...
V. Building in Layers
Now comes the stage that drives me mad. Layering is the heart of how I paint, and it is slow, deliberate work. I begin with very thin paint — almost a wash — and I don't touch detail at all. Not yet. I'm only interested in tone. I work from the darkest shadows first,...
IV. Drawing in Blood
Once I have my reference, the drawing begins. I usually work in charcoal, fixing it carefully so it doesn't bleed into the paint layers that follow. But sometimes I reach for a pastel pencil called sanguine - derived from the Latin word that means blood. There is...
II. The Sweet Spot
There is a moment, early in every painting, where I do something that might seem a little mathematical for an emotional painter: . On a blank canvas, I map out the Pythagoras division of the rectangle to find the sweet spots. precise lines, carefully drawn. Where...
I. Before the Brush Touches Canvas
A painting begins long before there is any paint. For me, the real work happens in the quiet. In the weeks, months, sometimes years before I ever stand in front of a canvas. I am an emotional painter. I paint what I feel. And feelings, as anyone knows, cannot be...