December Studio blog
December Studio Thoughts
Studio Thoughts: Handwriting in Paint. Dec 2nd
December begins with a sense of gathering threads from past practice meeting the fresh experimentations of November. In the studio, I feel the old recurring styles returning, not as repetition but as companions to the new. The brushstroke has become handwriting, a script of movement and memory, each flick and slide carrying the cadence and thought.
What is different now is the role of the underpainting. Where once it was hidden scaffolding, it is now allowed to remain visible, part of the final work. The mid tones fade across the canvas and the grounds are no longer erased but invited to speak, to hold the shape of later layers. This shift feels like a reconciliation the foundation is not discarded but honoured its presence deepening the unification of the surface.
The brushwork itself varies more than before sometimes precise, sometimes abstracted, sometimes painfully raw. These contrasts are not mistakes but necessary tensions, the marks of a practice that refuses to settle into ones voice. The experiments of November taught me that the painting can carry multiple registers at once handwriting and gesture, shimmer and becoming shadow control then release.
December then is about uniting old styles and new experiments the hidden and the revealed the careful and the broken all folded into a series that feels both familiar and newly alive. The studio is a place of continuity, but also of risk, and this month I want the work to show both the handwriting of the brush, and the willingness to let the underpainting breathe through.
Studio Reflections: Encountering Monet’s Waterlilies. Dec 4th
I vividly remember the first time I stood before Monet’s Water Lillie’s in Paris. It wasn’t the sheer scale of the canvas that struck me, but the brushwork the passages of paint that seemed to breathe with their own rhythm. The experience was utterly transporting a moment where painting revealed itself as something more than image, more than surface.
What captivated me most was the contrast within the work. There were bold, spiky textures that felt almost defiant set against long gentle subtle shapes that opened into calm expanses. The dialogue between these marks was astonishing there were crunchy and gnarly passages that pulled the eye into their density then smooth flowing areas that released it into serenity.
The painting’s power lay in this interplay. My gaze moved restlessly across the surface caught by the roughness soothed by the softness always aware of the painter’s hand and the choices embedded in each stroke. It was not uniform beauty but a layered living one an orchestration of contrasts that made the whole work shimmer with vitality.
That encounter reminded me how deeply brushwork can affect us, how the application of paint itself becomes a language. Monet’s water lilies spoke in textures, rhythms, and contrasts in doing so it revealed the extraordinary possibilities of paint as a medium of presence and transformation.
Studio Thoughts: The Presence in Painting. Dec 5th
Rushing is a kind of spoil. It fractures the rhythm breaks the thread of attention. Painting asks for presence the slow focus that notices small changes, the subtle shifts of tone, the way a brushstroke breathes against its neighbouring mark.
To be present is too heighten sensitivity. Colours speak more clearly, textures reveal their weight and the narrative of the work begins to unfold. Each mark becomes part of a larger conversation, not hurried but listened to.
This presence is not just discipline it is devotion. It is the act of staying with the painting long enough to hear what it wants to say, to let the story emerge in its own time. In that stillness, the connection deepens, and the work can then carry more than image.
Studio Thoughts: Winter Layers and the Voice of the Underpainting. Dec 7th
In my painting, the underpainting is often the most powerful presence. It is the unseen layer that breathes through the surface, carrying something beyond any single brushstroke. When I leave space for it to shine, the painting gains depth and vitality the negative space becomes a holder of attention, a quiet counterpoint to the marks above. This is the reason for the gold leaf and also so much more that I am just coming to understand.
December’s studio work has reminds me of this. Just as the underpainting waits beneath the surface, winter holds its own underpainting just waiting to be revealed.
Different tools brush, roller, scrapers and knifes each allow the underpainting to emerge in their own way. Matte softens, gloss amplifies. Each choice becomes part of the dialogue between surface, depth, abstraction and image. The more I allow the abstract nature of the underpainting to come through, the stronger the painting becomes. This is also a reverse of that, in as much as to only paint the most important elements is a choice to emit visual information that is blocking the message.
Studio Thoughts: Winter Painting and the Quiet Voice of December. Dec 9th
To paint in winter is to trust the unseen. To let the underpainting speak, just as the season speaks in silence. It is not about overworking, but about listening and allowing what lies beneath to carry the narrative.
In this way, painting becomes a reflection of the season itself a devotion to presence, a patience with what is waiting, and a faith that the most interesting part of the work may be the space we leave untouched.
The Drone of the World: Frequencies and Patterns in Motion. Dec 12th
There are moments when the world reveals itself not in words but in rhythms. A low hum beneath the surface a drone that carries through stone, soil, and sky. Frequencies are not only heard they are seen, felt, and lived. They are the invisible architecture of the universe or at least a reaction to its shaping the movements of rivers the spirals of shells the sands of a low tide the light reflecting of pooled water.
Studio Thoughts: The Universal Drone. Dec 13th
The earth is never silent. Its pulse is steady tides rise and fall, seasons turn, shadows lengthen and recede. Each is a frequency, a repetition, a pattern. To notice them is to understand the deeper cadence of existence.
I witnessed for the last few days a gathering of birds forming into a murmuration of starlings, and the sight was a revelation. Thousands of wings folding and unfolding in unison, the flock moved and the wings sounded louder than any single beat. The air itself seemed too ripple with their wing frequency, a living wave that beat a unique rhythm which curled and unfurled as it passed overhead and moved away.
It was not chaos but pattern, not accident but resonance. Each bird was both individual and part of a greater whole, like notes in a sound drone that sustain and transform. Watching them, I felt the same awe as when hearing a sustained tone in meditation a reminder that beneath the surface of things, there is order, rhythm, and connection.
Seeing Sound, Hearing Pattern
Drone frequencies in sound the long, low notes of a Tibetan singing bowl, the hum of a chant reminding us of this truth. They anchor us and steady us then open us to the wider rhythm. But the same drone exists in visual form,
the concentric ripples of water when a stone is dropped. The spiral of a fern unfurling and the shifting geometry of birds in flight.
Sound and sight are two languages of the same universal rhythm. To notice these frequencies is to step out of distraction and into belonging. It is to see the world not as fragments but as flow. The drone teaches patience, humility, and presence. It reminds us that we are resonant beings, moving in harmony with the larger patterns of earth and sky.
The murmuration of starlings, the hum of a bowl, the spiral of a shell each is a doorway into the universal. To stand close, to listen, to watch, is to remember some small part of this great resonance. The world hums, and if we attune ourselves, we can hear its song and see its pattern.
December Reflections: Returning to the Light. Dec 15th
December always seems to draw feelings to the surface. The festive season surrounds us with glittering shop windows, endless adverts, and the pressure of present‑buying. Yet beneath the noise of over commercialisation, I find myself searching for something purer a message that isn’t wrapped in paper or measured in receipts, but felt in the heart.
Studio Thoughts: Winter Solstice. Dec 21st
This month I’ve written fewer posts, swept up in the rhythm of socialising and gatherings. But today, on the solstice, I pause. The shortest day has passed, and with it comes the quiet promise of returning light. Each evening from now on will grow a little brighter, each dawn a little longer. That slow unfurling feels more important to me than any gift exchange it is a reminder of renewal, of patience, of the cycles that carry us forward.
I think about how to celebrate this turning point. Not with more things, but with present of time with loved ones, gratitude for warmth, and appreciation for the subtle shift in the world around me. The solstice is a hinge in the year, a moment when darkness yields, and light begins its steady return.
In my paintings, I want to walk this truth through. To render light not only for how it looks, but for what it means. Sunshine is more than brightness it is rhythm, season, inspiration. It is the pulse beneath the surface, the reminder that even after the longest night, the world leans back toward radiance.
So this December, I choose to honour the solstice. To let the returning light guide me, both in life and on canvas. To resist the pull of over‑commercialisation and instead celebrate the simple, profound gift of renewal.
Lifting the Veil: A New Year, A New Way of Seeing. Dec 28th
As the year turns, I begin again not by carrying forward the weight of past words, but by opening a new space for reflection. My paintings are not simply images they are invitations. They ask us to pause, to listen with both our eyes and our minds, and to reorder the way we perceive.
Studio Thoughts: Beyond the Surface. Dec 29th
The aim of my work is to lift the veil of perception to offer a lens through which the familiar becomes unfamiliar, and the ordinary reveals its hidden depths. Beneath the surface of what society has taught us to see lies another world one of deeper meanings, subtle connections, and resonances that are easily overlooked.
To encounter a painting is not only too look, but to listen. When we allow our eyes and minds to work together, we begin to hear the quiet truths beneath appearances. This act of listening reshapes thought and reminding us that perception is not fixed. It can be reordered, re‑imagined, and renewed. In a time when technology increasingly dictates how we view the world, my art seeks to remind us that there is always another way of seeing. By looking under or through the veil of preconception, we discover that meaning is not imposed from outside but arises from within. We from the interplay of light, memory, and imagination anew if we experience afresh.
Studio Thoughts: The Invitation. Dec 30th
Each canvas is an invitation to change your view to step beyond the patterns of habit and expectation, and to glimpse the hidden world that lies beneath. It is a call to see differently, to feel more deeply, and to remember that perception itself is a creative act.
This new year, my art begins afresh as a practice of unveiling, of listening and of reordering perception. It is a reminder to beneath into the surface not what we are taught to see but what is waiting to be revealed.
I am struggling to find the way to describe in words that what I am chasing in my head,
“Ineffable” Something too great, subtle, or sacred to be expressed in words.
“Numinous” A mysterious presence that evokes awe, as if brushing against the divine.
“Ephemeral” Fleeting, delicate, existing only for a moment before dissolving.
“Sublime” An overwhelming beauty or grandeur that resists full description.
“Apophatic” (from theology) Knowledge by negation grasping what something is not because its essence cannot be directly named.
It’s that paradox the thing is “right there” almost tangible, yet slips away when you try to pin it down. Philosophers like Merleau‑Ponty spoke of perception as always exceeding language, and poets often lean on metaphor precisely because literal words fall short. Some thinkers call this the veil of perception the idea that reality has layers, and art, poetry, or music can lift that veil just enough to let us glimpse what ordinary language cannot.
The closest word is probably ineffable but the truth is, the very fact that it resists naming is part of its essence. My art then becomes the vessel for communicating what language cannot. So I’ve made up my own words to brush against the feeling I am chasing in my work.
Invented Word Concepts
“Nearis”(from “near” + “iris”)
Suggests something close at hand, like the iris of the eye, yet opening into hidden depths.
“Subveil”(from “sub” + “veil”)
Evokes the act of looking beneath the veil of perception, hinting at hidden worlds.
“Ephemora”(from “ephemeral” + “aurora”)
Suggests fleeting light, a dawn that is felt but never fully captured.
“Threnis”(from Greek threnos, lament, but softened)
A word for the ache of beauty that resists language.
“Lucid Veil” (two words, but poetic)
A phrase that captures the paradox: clarity that is hidden, a veil that reveals.
I have learnt to lose my preconception of objects. To let go of the names and uses that society has pressed upon them, and to stand before them as they are bare, unadorned and waiting.
Much like a phenomenologist, I strip things of their identities, or perhaps to the absence of identity. A stone is no longer “stone,” a tree no longer “tree.” They are themselves, and in that selfhood they open into infinity.
When the windows of perception are cleaned, things appear not as emblem, but as presences. Infinite in their depth, inexhaustible in their sonority. A cup is not only for drinking it is a vessel of silence, of curve and shadow. A leaf is not only green it is a map of veins, a memory of light captured.
This practice is not about denial but about renewal. To see without preconception is to see with eyes and mind together, listening to the world as it speaks in its own tongue. It is to discover that beneath the surface of habit lies a hidden way of seeing one that reveals connections we had forgotten, or never known.
In this stripping back, the world becomes infinite. Each thing freed from the weight of prediction, becomes a portal. Each object once ordinary becomes phenomenal.
And so I walk, attentive. I look, I listen. I let the veil fall away.