I’m not really painting what I see.
I’m painting how it feels.
I’ve been painting for more than 30 years, and I’m still searching for the same thing, that moment when a painting begins to feel alive.
My work starts abstractly.
Instinct. Gesture. Colour. Emotion.
I build, remove, paint over and begin again. Slowly, something recognisable might emerge, a flower, a figure, a landscape.
But the subject is never really the point.
It’s what I felt in its presence that interests me.
A certain light. A colour I can’t forget. The energy of a place. Something beautiful, strange or fleeting that wakes something up in me.
Painting is my way of giving form to what I can’t quite put into words.
I’m not interested in perfection. I want the work to retain the evidence of its making, the searching, the mistakes, the instinct, the moments when something unexpected survives.
Because the paintings that matter to me aren't simply things we look at.
They make us feel something.
And perhaps, for a moment, remind us what it feels like to be fully alive.
This Is Where It Began
It’s deeper than skin. It’s thicker than paint.
I was 17 when I made my first fearless work.
A self-portrait that had very little to do with how I looked and everything to do with how I felt.
I wasn't interested in making myself beautiful. Or getting everything right.
I wanted to express something I couldn't say.
And somehow, painting gave me a way to do that.
More than 25 years later, I realise I'm still searching for the same thing.
My subjects have changed. My paintings have changed. I have changed.
But underneath it all is that same instinct —
to paint what something feels like, not simply what it looks like.
Perhaps that's why perfection has never interested me very much.
I want to see the searching. The marks. The layers. The moments where instinct took over.
The evidence that a human being was here.
Because for me, painting has always gone deeper than the surface.
Deeper than skin. Thicker than paint.
What I Carry Into the Work
Some things don't need to be resolved.
Born in South Africa, with South African and British heritage, and now living in New Zealand, I've always lived amongst contrasts.
Different landscapes. Different cultures. Different ways of belonging.
Perhaps that's why contradiction feels so natural to me.
Refinement and rawness.
Stillness and movement.
Strength and vulnerability.
Beauty with something less certain underneath.
I don't try to resolve those tensions in my paintings.
I let them exist together.
My process can begin loudly — music playing, paint moving quickly, instinct taking over — and end in complete stillness.
Looking.
Waiting.
Feeling whether the painting has become something more than the sum of its parts.
And eventually, if I've pushed it far enough, there comes a moment when it no longer feels entirely mine.
Someone else stands in front of it and brings their own history, memories and emotions to what I've made.
They might feel something completely different from what I felt while painting it.
I love that.
The process is deeply personal.
But the finished painting doesn't belong to my experience anymore.
It starts as mine.
What you feel in front of it is yours.
And perhaps that's all I really want from my work —
to make something that makes you feel.
What I believe…
Feeling matters more than perfection.
The marks, mistakes and unexpected moments are often where the life is.
Colour is never just colour.
It can hold memory, energy, longing and joy — things we feel before we have words for them.
Instinct matters.
Knowing when to push a painting further. Knowing when to leave it alone.
A painting shouldn't reveal everything at once.
I want there to be something left to discover.
The painting doesn't end with me.
What I bring to it is mine. What you feel in front of it is yours.
Art should be felt.
Because the paintings we live with become more than something we simply see.
How It Feels To Live With My Art
Find the work that stays with you.
You don't always know why a painting draws you in.
Sometimes you simply feel it.
Explore the available works and notice which one you keep coming back to.
And if you're drawn to the idea of something created especially for you, I also accept a limited number of commissions.
Come a little closer.
Some things don't make it to social media.
The unfinished paintings. The ones I paint over. The ideas I'm still trying to understand. The colours I can't stop thinking about.
My studio letters are where I share the work while it's still becoming — and the thoughts, questions and moments behind it.
You'll also be among the first to see new paintings as they leave the studio, with early access to available work and invitations to exhibitions and events.
Come inside the studio.