THE STORY
CHOOSING THE FIRE.
SOME PEOPLE LEARN
TO CONTROL THEIR
EMOTIONS.
AT ONE POINT, I
LEARNED TO PAINT
MINE.
THE EMBER
THAT NEVER WENT OUT.
I grew up with a desire to create. As a young boy, I could spend hours watching the man who painted the trucks at our family business by hand. Sometimes I would wake the next morning to discover that he had removed everything late in the evening and started again because he felt it was not quite good enough.
I did not yet know what place making would have in my life, but that combination of imagination, craftsmanship and the refusal to settle stayed with me.
But in an entrepreneurial family, I was taught that creativity was not a career. That it did not offer security. That it was not something you could build a life on. So I slowly turned away from it.
I chose responsibility, structure and certainty instead. And I became good at it. From the outside, everything looked solid. Decisions were made with reason and my days were filled with business plans, financial targets and expectations. I was building something dependable.
THE TURNING POINT
MAKING ROOM FOR AIR.
I ignored it for years. Until I couldn't anymore.
In my late forties, at a moment when most people tighten their grip, I did the opposite. I let go. Staying had started to cost me more than leaving. What I felt could not be explained or negotiated. It needed space, and I needed air.
So I sold my shares and stepped away from the family business. Not towards a clear plan, but towards honesty.
THAT IS WHEN PAINTING ENTERED MY LIFE.
Painting gave shape to what I had carried inside me for years without language. It gave direction to emotions I had learned to control instead of feel. What began as a way to cope slowly became my way to speak.
What started quietly, caught fire.
THE FIRE
MORE THAN A METAPHOR.
Fire became more than a metaphor for the choice I had made. I began to recognise its different forms in the work itself.
Fire can warm and comfort, but it can also suffocate, consume and destroy. Sometimes it appears as passion flaring up. Sometimes as something glowing quietly beneath the surface.
That is what I mean when I say:
BENEATH THE SURFACE
WHAT THE WORK CARRIES
My work begins where language ends. What appears on my canvas is not decoration. It is what burns underneath. Raw emotion. Personal transformation. The courage to feel what you would rather silence.
I did not go to art school. My path was not straight, and I am glad it was not. It is the reason I do not paint to prove anything today. I paint because this is what happens when I stop playing safe.
The work I make is inseparable from my journey. It is the result of listening to that ember instead of smothering it.
Beneath many of my paintings lies the belief that what we go through can be faced, carried and perhaps transformed.
Not everything can simply be left behind. But it can take on a different form. One that holds strength, meaning or hope.
MY BIGGEST LESSON?