After the storm

"After the Storm" ...This piece was a turning point for me—not just in style, but in trust. It was the first time I let go of the need to ‘paint something’ and instead allowed feeling and texture to lead. In fact it was my first ever abstract painting—and only my second ever canvas full stop. Yet somehow out of that emerged something which to me is more than "just" an abstract painting—it is a meditation on resilience, clarity, and the quiet majesty that follows upheaval. Almost as though my brush led me beyond representation into revelation.

That dark band you see? For me, it was like the last edge of the storm—the moment after everything’s stripped bare and there’s only silence. The rest… it’s a kind of emotional landscape. I didn’t set out to paint a horizon, but one emerged. That was part of the surrender, and a visual echo of a storm's final sweep across sky or sea. Above and below, ethereal mists of pale blues, grays, and ochres drift and dissipate, flecked with bursts of copper leaf: remnants of turmoil, or perhaps the first sparks of hope and renewal in our darkest hours. A horizon emerges faintly in the distance, and there's this luminous quality that breaks through the clouds and catches a gentle reflection, inviting us into this contemplative, almost spiritual expanse.

If you look at the surface, you can see how it bears the tactile evidence of layered time—spattered pigments, sweeping washes, and subtle scarrings that hint at both violence and calm—strong in its restraint.

I think anyone who connects with this piece often lives with a quiet strength. You know how to endure, how to rebuild. You understand that power often resides in quietude, and that beauty is not always found in perfection, but in what remains—what endures—after the storm.