Sometimes the most important moment in a painting happens before the image even appears.
When I create art it is meditative. It is something I begin without having anything specific in mind.
Starting with the first layer, sometimes it is a solid color, other times a mixture of hues, saturation, and tone. My strokes allow the surface to develop through movement, texture, and color. Sometimes a sweeping line moves across the surface, forming vine-like structures. Other times it may be smaller marks that build gradually through layers, creating tension and contrast within the painting.
I try not to have any type of idea in my mind when I begin. Instead, I respond to what starts to appear.
As the layers build, relationships between shapes begin to emerge. Areas of contrast and shifts in color may start out with a blurred quality and slowly begin moving in a direction that I cannot fully see yet.
Eventually something subtle happens.
Similar to when you might see a face in a cloud or a figure in the pattern of floor tiles, a form begins to feel familiar. Slowly something begins to reveal itself. A curve may resemble a shoulder or a back. A hollow shape may feel like the space of an eye. Sometimes a cluster of marks carries the weight of a figure without ever becoming literal.
I am not setting out to create a representation of what we see in the world. Instead, I am searching for the feeling, depth, and emotion within the surface of the work.
Our minds are wired to search for meaning in shapes and patterns. We see faces in clouds and figures in shadows, and in painting the same instinct can quietly guide the work forward.
When I notice a form beginning to surface, I respond to it carefully. Sometimes I reinforce it with a line or deepen the surrounding color. Other times I soften it and allow it to dissolve back into abstraction.
Both outcomes are part of the process.
Working this way keeps the painting alive for me. Instead of executing a predetermined image, I am discovering the piece as it unfolds.
That early stage, when the surface is still full of possibility and the image has not fully appeared yet, is often the most exciting moment in the process. It is where intuition takes the lead and where the painting slowly begins to reveal what it wants to become.
When the Subconscious Begins to Speak
Over time I began to notice that this stage of painting — when shapes start suggesting something familiar — feels less like invention and more like discovery.
Psychologist Carl Jung wrote about how the subconscious communicates through images and symbols long before we understand them consciously. In dreams, in memory, and sometimes through creative work, forms can surface that seem to carry meaning even before we can explain why.
Painting often feels similar.
When a shape begins to resemble a figure, a gesture, or part of the body, it is not always something I planned. Instead, it can feel as if the painting is revealing something that was already present beneath the surface of the process.
Sometimes those forms remain abstract. Other times they become more defined as the work develops. Either way, I have learned to trust that moment when an image begins to quietly emerge.
It is often the first signal that the painting has found its direction.
A Process That Continues to Evolve
Each painting develops differently, but this early stage of discovery continues to guide my work across many pieces. Some of these explorations eventually become part of larger bodies of work, including my collections Transmission, Root & Bloom, and Celestial Flow.
While each collection explores a different emotional landscape, they all begin in the same place — with marks, movement, and the quiet moment when an image has not fully appeared yet.
It is in that space of possibility that the work begins to reveal itself.
