In an age where images can be generated instantly, I choose to slow them down. I begin with abundance and work towards simplicity. The finished digital image is not the destination but the beginning—a surface to be reduced and unravelled until something quieter and more truthful emerges.
I think of this process as Reverse Genesis: an act of uncovering rather than creating, where the finished digital image becomes something to dismantle in search of its emotional essence. It is not about undoing technology, nor resisting its possibilities. Instead, it is an attempt to reveal the human presence that technology cannot replace.
At the heart of my practice is a belief that the physical artwork possesses a different kind of presence from its digital counterpart. A drawing occupies space, bears the evidence of time and touch, and exists as an irreplaceable object in the world. In an age of infinite reproduction, I remain interested in the unique mark of the human hand—not as a rejection of technology, but as a way of restoring intimacy, permanence, and attention to the act of looking.
What interests me is not visual perfection, but the point at which an image begins to breathe through suggestion rather than description. I believe authenticity cannot be manufactured. Artistic style is not something to be invented or performed; it is the residue left behind by sustained attention, repeated gestures, and the quiet discipline of returning to the work.
Sally in the Wood is an evolving body of work that brings together drawing, storytelling, and material objects to explore the relationship between digital and physical image-making. Centred on a solitary female figure who exists somewhere between folklore, memory, and imagination, the project reflects an enduring fascination with the female gaze, stillness, transformation, and emotional atmosphere. The drawings are less concerned with depicting a character than with creating a space in which narrative remains incomplete and meaning emerges through quiet observation.
As the work has evolved, Sally has gradually become more than a fictional figure. She has become a way of thinking about memory, identity, and the stories we inherit, invent, and quietly carry with us. The project occupies the space between autobiography and mythology, where personal experience becomes inseparable from imagination, and where drawing itself becomes an act of remembering as much as an act of making.
Technology will continue to evolve. My tools may change. My subjects may change. But the purpose remains the same: to create objects that carry the evidence of looking, thinking, and feeling.
To make images that could only have been made by a human hand.
To leave behind drawings that ask to be encountered slowly.
To return, always, to the hand.