Artist Statement

Nature has never been just a subject for me. It is a place of connection, calm and energy - and, increasingly, a way of understanding how I see the world. Since moving to the Netherlands, the parks, gardens and landscapes have become an important part of my practice. I am drawn to the way nature is never quite still: light shifts, colours change, seasons disappear into one another, and a place I know well can suddenly feel unfamiliar. I paint from these moments, often working en plein air and carrying those observations back into the studio. I do not try to paint nature as it appears before me; I paint the feeling it leaves behind - the memory of a place, a moment of light, or the emotion of simply being there.

My paintings are built through layers of colour and paint, using palette knives and impasto to create movement, depth and texture. The physicality of the paint is important to me. I want the surface to hold something of the experience itself - not simply what I saw, but what I felt. My work sits between observation and memory, between a real landscape and the personal experience of being within it. Gardens and open spaces particularly interest me because they are places where the natural and the personal meet. They can feel quiet and familiar, yet carry memory, longing and a sense of belonging. I am interested in that space between what is seen and what is remembered, and in how a landscape can become something deeply personal without losing its openness to interpretation.

I want my paintings to offer a pause - a moment away from the noise and pace of everyday life, where something familiar can become personal again. A colour might recall a place, a texture might bring back a feeling, or a landscape might open a memory that was not consciously being looked for. For me, painting is not about holding on to a landscape as it was, but about holding on to the feeling of having been there. The painting becomes a way of preserving something fleeting while leaving enough space for the viewer to bring their own memories, emotions and experiences into it. That is where I believe a painting becomes more than an image: when it begins to belong to the person looking at it.