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Working primarily from direct observation, and from photographic reference only when necessary, I practice portraiture, still life, interiors, and en plein air landscape painting. Across these subjects, I explore looking as an active process: how sustained attention can transform our perception of a person, object, space, or seemingly ordinary moment. While my practice draws from the observational traditions of Impressionism and realism, I am interested less in reproducing what I see than in what happens through the act of seeing itself.

People, spaces, objects, shifting light and shadow become starting points for exploring presence, perception, and the subtle psychological relationships that emerge between a viewer and a subject. I am drawn to distinctive subjects and unexpected compositional relationships, often finding moments of abstraction within observed reality. A figure becomes a shape; a shadow interrupts a space; an ordinary object gains an unexpected visual or emotional weight.

I work primarily in oil, responding to the subject through colour, form, light, and mark-making rather than following a predetermined image. My process moves fluidly between wet-into-wet painting and a more shape-based approach. I am particularly interested in the moment when one colour or mark encounters another and something unexpected begins to emerge: vibrancy, atmosphere, space, tension, or stillness. These moments allow the painting to move beyond description and develop its own internal logic. Through both spontaneous and controlled applications, I allow the work to evolve through relationships between colour, form, light, and brushwork. My approach is informed by painters such as Joaquín Sorolla, Édouard Vuillard, and Euan Uglow, whose distinct practices demonstrate the possibilities of close observation, light, colour, structure, and the everyday subject. Rather than treating this history as something fixed, I see observational painting as an ongoing conversation—one that can still ask contemporary questions about attention, perception, and how we experience the physical world.

I am particularly interested in the relationship between likeness, atmosphere, and expressive brushwork. Rather than pursuing exact replication, I use visible brushstrokes and gestural mark-making to evoke energy and presence. The finished painting becomes evidence of an encounter: not simply a record of what was seen, but of the decisions, discoveries, hesitations, and responses that occurred through looking. Ultimately, I see painting from observation as more than a means of representing the world. For me, observation is both subject and method. Painting creates a space to pause, pay attention, and encounter something familiar with renewed awareness.

In a culture increasingly shaped by speed, distraction, and images experienced in passing, sustained looking becomes a deliberate act. The subjects may be ordinary. The act of looking is not.