One of my earliest childhood memories is trying to "interrogate" leaves using shoe polish. I was convinced that leaves held secret information that I needed to uncover. The method was not particularly scientific — and the leaves never quite gave up their secrets — but the impulse behind it has stayed with me ever since. Plants have always felt like they contain something I have not yet fully understood.
I did not set out to paint plants. Early on I worked with figures, with landscape, with pure abstraction. But at some point I found myself returning to botanicals again and again — a branch against a pale ground, a cluster of blooms, roots spreading through earth. The same curiosity from childhood, expressed differently.
Stillness as a practice
Over the years my connection with nature has deepened through yoga, meditation, and other contemplative practices. These have taught me to slow down and look more carefully — to notice the weight of a petal, the particular way a stem bends under its own bloom, the shadow a leaf casts on a leaf beneath it. That quality of attention is what I am trying to bring into the paintings.
"Stillness" in the title of this post is not just a mood — it is a method. The paintings that interest me most are the ones that came out of genuine quiet, where I was not pushing toward an outcome but staying open to what was there. A plant is a good teacher for that. It does not hurry.
Between the literal and the abstract
My botanical paintings are not illustrations. I am not trying to document a species accurately, the way a naturalist might. What interests me is the feeling of a plant — its gesture, the way light falls through petals or catches on a waxy leaf. I work from observation and from memory both, so the image drifts slightly away from the literal and into something more interior.
That drift is deliberate. A painting that too closely resembles a photograph leaves little room for the viewer. I want to leave space for you to bring something to the work — your own memory of a garden, a field, a moment of quiet.
Colour in the Icelandic light
Living in Iceland shapes the way I see colour. The light here is extraordinary — low and raking in winter, long and luminous in summer, always shifting. Colours that might read as muted elsewhere reveal an inner intensity in northern light. That quality is something I try to carry into the paint: warmth held inside a cool ground, a yellow that hums without shouting.
If you would like to know more about my background and practice, you can read more on the About page, or reach me through the contact page.