The Painting Process
Each painting emerges through a slow, attentive process shaped by observation, intuition, and the traditional methods of oil painting.
Immersion
My paintings are rooted in realism, but the experience of creating them is deeply immersive.
When I paint, the outside world grows quiet and my attention narrows to presence — the subtle threshold where an animal begins to feel less like an image and more like an encounter. I study the smallest shifts: how muscle rests beneath skin, how fur settles over form, how light travels across a living being. I often find myself wondering what might exist behind the gaze — what quiet awareness lives there, just beyond what can be seen.
Intuition
Most works begin with a loose intention, an atmosphere I’ve imagined rather than a fixed outcome. But once the structure is in place, something shifts. The painting begins to lead, and I follow intuitively — adjusting, listening, allowing the image to unfold in its own time. In that space, the process becomes a balance between observation and instinct, between what is seen and what is felt.
The Beginning of a Painting
The choice of subject is never rushed. I spend long stretches reading, researching, and sitting with stories until one quietly takes hold. Sometimes it begins with light — the way it gathers along a face or dissolves into shadow. Other times it’s something less tangible: a feeling that lingers, a presence that refuses to leave. That quiet recognition is usually where a painting begins.
I’m endlessly drawn to the subtle tensions that make a being feel alive — strength held within stillness, softness held within power, the delicate boundary between vulnerability and sovereignty. Imagining how those qualities might live in paint is what pulls me forward, layer by layer, until the animal begins to emerge not just as form, but as presence.
Structure
Technically, my process draws from the indirect methods of the Old Masters. Each painting begins with a monochromatic underpainting in warm earth tones — often burnt umber — where I establish the architecture of the piece: its structure, weight, and emotional gravity. It’s a quiet, foundational stage where light and shadow are resolved before color enters.
Glazing
From there, the painting is built slowly through translucent glazes. Each layer is thin and deliberate, allowing depth and luminosity to gather over time. By letting the underpainting breathe through these layers, the final surface holds both solidity and atmosphere — form shaped gradually rather than imposed.
What Remains
In the end, what remains on the canvas carries the rhythm of that process: observation, stillness, and many quiet hours of listening translated into paint.
My hope is that this stillness endures — that what began as a fleeting encounter becomes something that can be lived with, returned to, and quietly felt long after the moment itself has passed.