Let's get real
I get a lot of comments on social media and YouTube, and many of those comments are questions.
“What surface are you working on?”
“How do you fix your charcoal?”
“How do you get that texture?”
I try to answer most of my comments but those questions go unanswered.
Not because I’m being secretive, but because I don’t think the answers are in any way useful.
I could tell you that I fix my charcoal through a combination of layering, water, sanding and abrasion so that the pigment presses into the canvas. I could tell you that this only works because there are already multiple thick layers of paint underneath. I could tell you exactly which materials I use and in what order.
But none of that is really the point.
Those techniques weren't something I set out to invent. They emerged gradually through years of trial and error while I was following my own curiosity. They evolved because of the things I naturally love doing.
If you copied those techniques exactly, at best you might end up with a pale imitation of what I do. At worst, you'd spend countless hours pursuing something that was never meant for you in the first place.
There is one question I am almost never asked, and yet it's the question that matters most:
"How do I discover my own techniques and processes?"
That's the question I've spent years trying to answer in my courses and inside Art Tribe.
The strange thing is that most people don't arrive asking it.
They arrive wanting to know how to achieve a particular effect, paint a particular subject, or create a particular result. That's understandable. It's a much easier question to ask. It's also much easier to sell.
A course that promises, "By the end of this you'll be able to paint a beautiful landscape" is far easier to market than a course that asks, "What is it that you really want to say, and how might you discover a way of saying it?"
But I've never been interested in teaching people how to paint like me.
I've always been interested in helping people uncover what is uniquely theirs.
That's why so much of my teaching has focused on experimentation, play, curiosity and self-discovery. Not because those things are fashionable, but because they're the path to work that actually belongs to you.
Anyone can learn a technique.
The harder task is discovering a process that feels like an extension of your own mind, your own history, your own way of seeing.
When we make our own unique art in our own unique way, using methods we've discovered rather than borrowed, we feed ourselves spiritually in a way that nothing else can.
Every single painting I make helps me to grow into a more fully realised version of myself. Each one teaches me something. Often I express things I didn’t even realise I was feeling, or I revisit past feelings with a new viewpoint.
The artwork matters, of course. But the real gift is who we become in the process of finding our own voice.
And of course, when we give that gift to ourselves, we also give it to others. That work that you poured all of yourself into..? That’s now going to touch the hearts of others. They’re going to feel some of how you felt and some of what you poured onto the canvas. They’re getting a genuine piece of you and that is priceless.
So it really couldn’t matter less what I do… what matters is how you can find your way to the most unique expression of yourself. Because that’s where the magic lies :)