2025 was a year of subtraction. I found myself removing more than I was adding — scraping back paint, leaving areas of ground unpainted, resisting the urge to fill every corner of the canvas. It was, at times, uncomfortable work. The impulse to keep going, to add one more mark, is strong. Learning to set the brush down and call something finished requires a different kind of confidence than painting does.
Negative space
The shift began almost by accident. I was working on a small piece — a botanical composition with a pale, warm ground — and I overworked it. Too many marks, too much colour, too insistent. I scraped it back almost to nothing, planning to start again. What remained — the ghost of the marks, the bare ground showing through in places — was better than what I had painted. I left it.
That became the template for much of the year’s work. Not erasure for its own sake, but a genuine interest in what emptiness can carry. A single stem on a wide pale ground. A cluster of marks at one edge, the rest open. The eye travels differently across a painting like that — slower, more attentive.
Contemplative practice and the canvas
My practice of yoga and meditation has long shaped the way I work, but in 2025 that influence became more explicit. The idea of creating space — of not filling every moment with something — translated directly into the paintings. Silence is not the absence of sound; it is a presence of its own. The unpainted ground began to feel the same way to me.
The palette
Colour-wise, 2025 moved toward greater warmth. A lot of ochre, raw umber, soft terracottas — colours that feel earthed, grounded. Against those, occasional cooler notes: a blue-grey, a muted sage. Nothing loud. The Icelandic winter light I was working in for much of the year may have had something to do with it — that quality of indirect, diffused illumination seems to ask for quieter colour.
What came out of it
The works from 2025 are perhaps the most restrained I have made. Some people will find them too spare. That is fine. I am not trying to make paintings that please everyone — I am trying to make paintings that are honest about what I am thinking and seeing at this particular moment in the practice.
If you would like to know more about my practice or get in touch, you can find me through the contact page or read more about me here.