Description
My painting practice is rooted in colour, instinct, and inherited ways of seeing. Born in Africa and raised within an artistic household, visual expression was never separate from daily life. My mother, a professional artist and art teacher, shaped my early relationship with mark-making as something lived rather than learned — a direct, embodied form of communication.
Working primarily with acrylic, my process draws on African, tribal, and shamanic influences — not as motifs to be quoted, but as ways of entering the work. I begin intuitively, allowing colour, rhythm, and gesture to emerge without a fixed image in mind. These early layers function as a kind of visual invocation, guided by feeling rather than concept.
From this intuitive ground, recurring themes surface organically: faces — often distorted, fragmented, or surreal; expressionistic or cubist-inflected portraits; and landscapes, trees, and natural forms that carry psychological and emotional charge. At times the work feels ancestral or energetic; at others it moves into catharsis and release, giving form to states of anguish, mental unrest, or so-called “ugly” emotions. Colour remains constant — vivid, expressive, and unapologetic — acting as both carrier and transformer of emotional intensity.
While the work begins instinctively, it is shaped by a strong structural foundation. My studies at the University of Cape Town’s School of Architecture, followed by training and professional practice as a graphic designer, inform the compositional intelligence beneath the surface. As the painting develops, I respond to what begins to speak back — symbols, emotional tones, emergent forms — refining, covering, and re-working until the piece holds both raw expression and visual coherence.
Influenced by fauvism, expressionism, abstraction, and impressionism, my work privileges colour as a primary language. Painting becomes a dialogue between spontaneity and control, intuition and design — a means of making visible inner landscapes that exist beneath words, logic, and restraint.
