This painting began without a story.
Inspired by watching my young daughters make art, I wanted to explore a way of creating that comes so naturally to children, but that we often lose as adults.
When my daughters sit down to draw, they rarely know what they’re going to make. They simply begin. Shapes become characters, marks become objects, and entire imaginary worlds unfold before them. Only afterwards do they tell me the extraordinary stories of what they’ve created.
The act of making comes first. The meaning follows.
I wanted to approach this painting with that same freedom.
The composition emerged in a matter of hours. Somewhere amongst the marks, a beast and a flower appeared. Rather than inventing a story and attempting to illustrate it, I allowed the characters to reveal themselves, building colour, relationships and rhythm around what had already emerged.
From a distance, the painting takes on the appearance of a face. Move closer, and it dissolves into a strange world of characters, gestures and unexpected relationships.
The Beast Who Fell in Love with the Flower is an exploration of imagination without expectation. Of allowing curiosity to lead rather than knowing where we’re going.
Perhaps it’s also a reminder that we don’t always need to understand what we’re making while we’re making it.
Sometimes the story only reveals itself afterwards.
