The Studio

Falls / Wings

It began as water falling — a rush, a descent. Somewhere in the making, it became something else entirely. The paint told me what it was before I did. Everyone who sees it asks the same question: who painted that? I don't have a better answer than: the work did.

Distance

Made at Lake Windermere, where the weight of things fell away and I heard a word: just be here. This is all sky above turbulent sea — cobalt erupting into magenta, cold wax giving the surface geological memory. It doesn't try to be beautiful. It refuses to give you a horizon to stand on. That's the point.

The Cold

There is a kind of quiet that isn't empty — it's the quiet that precedes something. The Cold is that moment: pale field, dark mass, a horizon barely holding. Cold wax pulled across the surface, leaving the marks of restraint. This one rests differently in a room than it photographs.

In Situ
Resting on the mantle, with brass candlesticks and tapers.

The Sound

Sky moving over water at the hour when the day hasn't decided what it will be. Orange burning low along the distant shore, grey and blue doing their slow argument overhead. The kind of painting that changes color depending on what light it's in.

In Situ
Installed, in late-afternoon light with a brass sconce nearby.

Channel

Green mass rolling through a pale sky — storm clouds, chartreuse, a sun burning orange-pink just above the sea. There's something almost muscular in how the sky holds itself here, as if it knows it's being watched. One of the more plainly beautiful paintings in this collection, and not the lesser for it.

Brook

Wide sky, low treeline, the day after rain. This one has a stillness the others don't — something settled and waiting, the light broken and soft. The land barely visible, the sky claiming everything. I keep returning to this palette: grey-blue, green, the whiteness that isn't white.

Sky

Dusk over rolling hills — the kind of sky that makes you stop moving. Teal and amber doing what they always do at this hour, negotiating. A silhouette of treeline against the last light, and overhead the whole drama still unresolved. This is the painting I'd put in the room where people eat together.

Pine on Oak

Dark pines on an oak board — 24 × 24, built for the wall not the floor. Gold slashing horizontal behind the canopy, the trees straining up through it. The board gives the surface a warmth canvas can't. A smaller work, but not a lesser one. It holds the room differently than a large painting. It anchors it.

Field Sketch  ·  Oil on Canvas Paper

The Mountain

A practice sketch, small in scale and unguarded in that way practice things are. Snow on a peak, dark clouds pressing in from both sides, that specific green-yellow that appears only in mountain valleys. I love this one precisely because it wasn't trying to be anything. It just was.