Much of fear centres on various types of lack. A sense of perpetual nothingness and barrenness where instead we might wish there was plenty.
Fear elicits a heaviness. It feels like a weighted, encroaching, veil that folds over you. I tried to convey this sense of dark, slow, enveloping in this painting. This painting shows both the sparseness and the congestedness of fear. Like an oil slick, or a dense fog, it comes from above and pours over the vacant space.
I find it interesting that fearing nothingness creates a feeling that is, in contrast, thick and engulfing.
Oil on Canvas
60cms x 60cms
Painted in 2025
Detail of Barren
Oil on Canvas
60cms x 60cms
This painting speaks to the feeling of having ended one life but not yet inhabiting whatever the next one may be: incubation, evolution, constriction and the unknown.
It is part of my latest series reflecting on fear, stagnation and aridity.
Oil on canvas
60cms x 60cms
Painted in 2025
This painting is called Wanting Time to Speed Up and Wanting Time to Slow Down.
Have you ever had that contradictory desire?
It happens when the present feels uncomfortable, and when you are looking forward to being out of it. You imagine all the good things that will come to you when it is over. But in the same instance, for different reasons, you fear this accelerated passage of time and what it may mean for what you are able to do.
We are all told we have to enjoy the moment and be as present as we can. But it can sometimes feel incredibly hard.
This painting depicts that meeting point, in the centre, between two worlds and between two times.
Oil on Canvas
80 cms x 120 cms
Painted in 2025
Detail of Wanting Time to Speed Up and Wanting Time to Slow Down
Oil on Canvas
80 cms x 120 cms
Oil on Canvas
Painted in 2025
Seeds is inspired by the impossible trail of sorting seeds as told across folklore, fairytales and myths.
In the Greek myth of Eros and Psyche, Psyche’s first task from her mother-in-law, Aphrodite is to separate a huge, mixed heap of seeds into individual piles before sunrise.
In the Russian folktale “Vasilisa the Beautiful,” the witch Baba Yaga tasks the heroine with sorting good grains from rotten ones and then separating poppy seeds from peas.
In the ancient fairytale Cinderella, the heroine is forced by her stepmother to sort lentils from the cinders in the fireplace before she is allowed to go to the Prince’s ball.
The task symbolises the process of learning discernment, and differentiating the important from the trivial. The seemingly impossible task is completed with the help of magical helpers like birds, ants, or magic dolls: the heroine’s friends ♥️
Detail of Seeds
Oil on Canvas
60cms x 60cmx
This painting confronts the narrative that we should see undaunted linear progression in our lives.
Traditional ideas of progress feel linked with “success”, and both terms are defined by what our mainstream culture sees as acceptable, but not necessarily what is good, or right, or true for each of us. I think it can equate to a sort of social conformity. If you’re on the line you’re accepted as “successful” and if you are off it then god help you. The spirallic path can feel like failure in comparison to the linear one, evoking a pressure, judgement and comparison from others and ourselves.
But the spirallic path is closer to how things more naturally evolve. Centring it helps us to reject judgement and commit to the truth of our path, whatever it looks like.
Oil on canvas
80cms x 80cms
Painted in 2025
Detail of Non-Linear Progress
Oil on Canvas
80 cms x 80 cms