small art as a big thank youSmall Glimmers - The Story of the Teeny Tiny Paintings
I am currently working towards a solo exhibition in September 2026 at Field Trip Gallery.
Booking a show gives me something invaluable as an artist - a deadline, accountability, and direction.
The original concept for this exhibition was to explore the liminal space of moving house. That moment when you are no longer fully part of the familiar environment you have known for years, but you have not yet fully discovered the new one either.
For fourteen years I lived in Cedar Creek, drawing and painting the landscape and my garden over and over again. It was an endlessly rich visual resource and I never tired of it.
Moving my home and studio made me nervous. I wondered how it would affect my work and where my inspiration would come from.
But once the boxes were unpacked, something unexpected happened.
My daily dog walks became a way of observing, discovering and exploring a completely new visual landscape. Each walk offered small moments of beauty - what I like to think of as daily glimmers.
My new home didn’t come with a garden. Despite starting to plant almost immediately, it will take time before it has the abundant flora I loved so much at my old place. In a way, that absence has been a gift. It has encouraged me to look outward and observe my surroundings with renewed curiosity.
This new body of work is divided into smaller collections. Each finished painting is 30 × 30 cm, acrylic on ply.
When I am out walking in the neighbourhood, I take photographs of anything that catches my eye. Often these are natural objects - leaves, seed pods, flowers, fragments of plants. When possible, I “harvest” small specimens and bring them back to the studio.
The process always begins with drawing. I work in a 30 × 30 sketchbook, making observational drawings directly from the objects I have collected.
From there I begin the paintings.
First, I make two paintings from life - one with the object resting on a surface and another with it placed in a vessel. These works allow me to slow down and really study the form, colour and presence of the object.
Then I move into a more exploratory stage. I create three additional paintings that become progressively more abstracted. These are informed by the drawings and by the visual understanding developed during the observational paintings.
While I am working on this part of the process, I also make a small 20 × 20 cm painting.
Once finished, that painting is cut into 10 × 10 cm squares.
And that is how the Teeny Tiny Paintings are born.
They are small fragments of a larger exploration - little pieces of the studio process that carry the same colour, energy and curiosity as the larger works.A Small Gift from the Studio
Each month, I give away one of these Teeny Tiny Paintings to someone on my mailing list.
It’s a small way to share what is happening in the studio and say thank you to the people who follow along with my work.
If you are on my list, you’ll also receive studio updates, early access to workshops, invitations to exhibitions, new blog posts, and a glimpse of my monthly still life and the process behind it.
And once a month, someone receives a tiny painting in the post.
March Teeny Tiny Collection
