Building a Story, One Image at a Time

I don’t begin my artworks with a finished sketch.

There is no carefully planned composition waiting to be built, no complete concept mapped out before I start. Instead, I begin with an image — and then I let the story unfold.

My works are built from layers of my own photographs. Of course, there are layers in the Photoshop sense too, but for me, they are also layers of meaning, memory and narrative. Much like layers of oil paint on a canvas, each image adds something to the story. Sometimes it deepens it. Sometimes it changes the direction entirely.

I use authentic photographs — images that were never staged in a studio or taken specifically because I knew I would use them in a particular artwork. I go back through my archives, looking for fragments and visual clues that might support the story I am trying to tell. And sometimes the image I need doesn’t exist in my archive yet. Then I take it.

The poppies in Stay Strong are a good example.

I came across them on a walk from the beach back home. They were so incredibly beautiful that I knew I had to photograph them. At the time, I had no idea why. I simply knew I needed to remember them.

When I later returned to the artwork, I realised they were exactly the missing piece.

That is how my process often works.

I collect images without always knowing what they are for. A landscape. A detail. A person. A flower. A shadow. Something I notice in passing. Later, one of those images can suddenly become the piece that makes the story come together.

It is a very different way of working from the one I have spent most of my professional life doing.

For decades, I have worked with concepts. I have been paid to develop ideas, sketch them out, present them, refine them and turn them into something tangible. There is usually a brief, a deadline and a fairly clear expectation of where the process should lead.

In my art, I deliberately do almost the opposite.

I don't want to know the whole story before I begin.

I want the first image to lead me somewhere. I want each new element to create the possibility for the next one. Sometimes I find the right photograph immediately. Sometimes I have to search through years of archives. Sometimes I take a new photograph because I suddenly realise what is missing.

The creative process becomes part of the artwork itself.

And perhaps that is what I enjoy most about working this way: I am not illustrating an idea I already have. I am discovering the idea as I make the work.

There is something wonderfully freeing about that.

After a lifetime of being paid to come up with ideas, I have finally given myself permission to not know where an idea is going.

And getting paid for it?

Well… the jury is still out on that one.