Small Worlds, Hidden Stories — New Paintings Heading to Melbourne

There is something I love about painting small.

A small canvas asks you to come closer. It doesn’t dominate a room or reveal everything at once. Instead, it invites you, it draws you in, asking you to notice the tiny details, the unexpected object, the direction of a gaze, a glimmer of light, or perhaps something that doesn’t quite belong.

Over the past few months, I have been creating a new collection of paintings that will soon be heading to Melbourne Art Fair with Tyger Gallery.

And although these works are small in scale, they seem to have developed worlds of their own.

Painting the moment between reality and imagination

My paintings have always been rooted in things I love to observe.

Beautiful objects, the natural world, water, light, collected treasures and the strange little arrangements that catch my attention.

But increasingly, I find myself less interested in simply painting what I can see.

I want to know what else might be happening.

What if a goldfish could live inside an old glass bottle?

What if a dragonfly landed upon a treasured teapot and suddenly became part of its story?

What if a figure standing quietly beside an enormous rock formation was not simply looking at the landscape, but encountering something within herself?

That tiny shift, from observation into imagination, is where these new paintings seem to live.

Works such as Dragonfly Tea, A Curious Goldfish and The Wanderer begin with familiar objects, yet I have deliberately placed them together in ways that invite another narrative.

There is no single explanation.

I like leaving enough space for the person looking at the painting to finish the story themselves.

From still life to another world

Alongside these works, I have been painting a series of small coastal scenes: Endure, Threshold, Drift and Haven.

At first glance, they are landscapes.

But for me, they are really about our inner landscapes.

The rocks became larger. The figures became smaller. The ocean began to feel less like a backdrop and more like a vast space between one place and another.

As I painted them, words began presenting themselves.

Endure.

The strength to remain when something feels much larger than you.

Threshold.

That strange place between what you have known and what is waiting beyond it.

Drift.

The moments when we stop forcing direction and allow ourselves to be carried for a while.

Haven.

A place — internally or externally — where we can soften and feel safe.

I often don’t understand everything a painting is saying while I am creating it. Sometimes its meaning arrives much later.

I think that is one of the things I love most about painting.

Off to Melbourne

It is always a slightly vulnerable moment sending paintings out into the world.

For weeks or months they exist quietly in my studio. I see them unfinished, change my mind about them, paint over sections, move things around and gradually watch their personalities emerge.

Then suddenly they are wrapped, labelled and heading somewhere completely new.

I’m delighted that this collection will be making its way to Melbourne with Tyger Gallery, where they will have the opportunity to meet an entirely new audience.

Perhaps one of these little worlds will stop someone as they walk past.

Perhaps they will lean closer.

Perhaps they will see a completely different story from the one I imagined.

Really, that is where the painting begins its next life.