is it okay to say this is my favourite painting to date? well, it is.

If I remember correctly (and my memory is astonishing), I painted Mind Without Matter while living in the second place I ever moved out to – a flat in Shoreditch, with two girlfriends. I was 19, dating my first love. It was intense. I think I loved him more than he loved me.

At that age, I was trying to find myself – like so many of us are – already buried in uni debt, parking tickets and bad decisions. I had adopted this mindset that I should be able to do whatever I wanted, although honestly, I didn’t want much.

My mind was caught between two worlds: One side wanted to run — to jump out of my body, leave the city, the country, the world. The other side wanted to stay, to be ‘good’, to succeed… whatever that meant.

So, I painted.

Mind Without Matter came from that headspace – a tangled storm of feelings that had nowhere else to go. At the time, I didn’t think too much about it. I just made marks. Quick, messy, physical. When I look at the painting now, I see my inner world laid bare – even though, from the outside, I probably looked calm. People often ask me how I stay so calm. It’s probably a coping mechanism. The the inner turmoil comes out in my work.

The final piece shows layered brushstrokes in acrylic and ink – mostly black, smeared over raw tones. There are faces, shapes that could be anything. I won’t say what I see, or what certain strokes bring back for me, because I know how easily that can shift a viewer’s perspective. From what felt like nonsensical brush movements, I found a kind of sense—both in my mind and in the faint forms that have emerged from the chaos.

This painting is a portrait of a younger version of me, in how I felt. A girl trying to hold it together while everything inside her was loud.

Gosh hit’s hard to write without giving away toooo much of my personal life…