The Artist

My work lives at the intersection of portraiture and sculptural abstraction — a space where the human form emerges from, and dissolves into, raw material. Every piece begins with an encounter: a face, a posture, a fleeting expression that demands to be held in paint. I build surfaces the way a sculptor shapes clay — additive and subtractive, layering oil and pigment until the canvas becomes a topography of emotion. The texture is not decorative; it is the work itself. Each ridge, each crevice, carries the weight of a gesture. I am drawn to restraint. A limited palette — black, white, grey, the occasional whisper of warmth — forces a clarity of intention. There is nowhere to hide. The work must hold its ground through form alone, through the tension between presence and absence. These are not illustrations. They are artifacts of a physical process — hours of building and stripping away, of listening to the painting and responding. The result is something that exists between figuration and memory, between portrait and landscape, between what is seen and what is felt. Working from Algarve, I am deeply influenced by the Atlantic light and the weight of stone. My practice is solitary and deliberate. Each work takes weeks, sometimes months, to reach its inevitable conclusion.