I often take for granted that there are people out there who wish to know the deeper meaning behind my work, and of course those that just wish to run away from it, but that is a story for another blog.

So a lot of my art has NO meaning, ZERO…..well that is not strictly true, it would be very difficult to create a painting without any meaning at all, even if the meaning was the face you had no meaning to creating it.

Even creating from observation such as life drawing, still life, portrait, landscapes etc says something about me as an artist, which part I choose to leave and which to take out. When to approach the canvas with impasto or thin layers or a combination, the composition, foreshortening, horizon line.

All the while celebrating being alive and how unlike some, I never go in wishing to recreate reality, not even so much as the literal colours! I find creating the mad crazy work much more fun, you may be surprised to discover however, that I find these far more challenging. Even though that is how my Brian works, flashing in stills and movies of an epic scenes across my mind’s eye. Scenes which I don’t have the skills to replicate. Instead I choose which to direction to take these ideas in, or more likely simply how it comes out within my style (how I naturally find satisfaction in putting down the paint) and ability allows.

So I thought I would take some time to explore a little about one of my favourite, more recent paintings completed around summer 2025; called “Beneath the surface'“ depicting a disembodied submerged head, a fish going by just to lead the eye and a barely there ship wreck.

So Beneath the surface is a Acrylic painting on a 32 × 40 inch canvas, standard traditional depth (18mm vs 38mm or more for deep edge)
It follows central themes in my work, water as rebirth and change (in it’s many forms) and how it is most tranquil and dangerous. The colours change depending on the light, as well as my computer deciding to mess up the colour profile and add weird patches where the shadows of the light through the window are. In dull light it appears more on the grey spectrum with lamp black and Azura blue mixed in various degrees with titanium white. In brighter light these colour mixes have more of the blue appearing.

I think this play on light and shadow where the paint itself changes is fascinating and while unintended to have narrative (though I did intend for the changing of colours). I think it can speak into the masking , or at the very least not sure if we would be accepted for our quirks or have our needs met, often needing to step out of busy situations. in the past we would endure instead.

Instead we endure and tell ourselves we are comfortable, despite everything being of the contrary (I am not entirely sure if I like the word unmasking, but it is true of being many selves depending on which group with, which we all do to a certain extent but we also remember who we are as a whole, which at the time I often lost myself to the character I was being)

So central themes my work tends to follow is :

water as rebirth and change
water as ever changing, calm to turmoil, water to ice.
water as a place we love to be in but wouldn’t survive long term in,
and how this mirrors space, we have not explored the entirety of the ocean either
fish out of water in space - us in different environments
difference and way our minds think and set us apart - mind maze and polo conscious
disembodied heads because that is where our brain is - although the gut and nervous system have their own set of functions and I will depict these separately sometimes as weird alien lightning forests.
figures in water as a connection to nature
Animals and plants to connect to nature but in my own short creative hand.

landscapes inspired by Ralph’s walks
space and cosmos, and how we are but a speck in the universe
space and how I often felt alien growing up undiagnosed
and more, more of which can be found in the first volume of my book, every 2 pages or so with a paragraph going into that theme
life and death, how short life can be and celebrating nature and world, while hiding from politics and current affairs.

it can be found here

Must begin writing volume 2, I have ideas for a trilogy -all curated art but themes within the text and at shown.

So Beneath the surface

The submerged face struggles to find their voice, it is tricky to speak when you are submerged in water and in danger of drowning (often feel drowned by life demands) the hint of the ship wreck is a nod to being a bit of train wreck in my past and not reaching potential now. Often feeling like there must be some secret to come off of insanely difficulty mode and into story mode (ie not hard difficulty, but easy - gamer speak….think halo was legendary and gears of war insanity, and many like horizon zero dawn have a story mode where the enemies just flop over and allow you to pass, for their difficulty settings?)

And yet while the face is submerged and in danger of drowning, it also appears like a god and becoming one with its environment. Or so it appears. The single fish reminding that submerged face doesn’t belong here. Despite looking comfortable and like any other, we may be flapping, treading water inside, beneath the surface. Beneath the surface a double meaning as a saying we say, beyond surface level thinking but also literally with bodies of water.

So from these themes and narratives, many images flash before my mind’s eye conjuring up new takes on those themes, and occasionally new themes to explore. ADHD even with the ADHD meds making me more autistic and boring, ie myself (but unable to go back to that time of burning out to fit in). I have many visuals in full flash at me from revisited themes. Themes I have not yet exhausted and go into those on going surfaces.

I often don’t really know where these come from, I guess a lot is from sexuality and being attracted to women and the feminine, and being inspired by their photos, then combining with other photos, although sometimes I just use the location and artistry that they and the photographer choose.

This face however, I edited from a photo of a submerged face with bubbles coming out of her mouth, tweaked the colours in to the blue and then edited in the fish and shipwreck, overlaying on top of a photo of the background I had already completed and was drying. Tweaked the colours and overlays again, used the smudge tooling isolated certain areas to darken, keeping the rest lighter, and this gave me this image to work from :

Photos from pexels overlayed and layer adjustments applied, on top of photo of the background colours I had painted.

I am not one of those artists to work purely from imagination, I need to find a way to at the very least have a framework to then work off of. It won’t be realistic or following to the letter, but I need something for my work to not look completely naive. This is one of those paintings that just worked with minimum challenge, taking me 12 hours plus 5 hours of contemplation over course of a week. I expected it to take a lot longer!

So there are loose narratives within this piece, finding my voice and trusting in myself as a late diagnosed neurodivergent is still very much a work in progress. At least now I can accept the many times I don’t feel like being social, rather than push myself and make myself ill like I used to do. Plus being kind in situations I find difficult and exhaust me. I would much rather be communicating via paint.

Beneath the surface, shipwrecked, the meaning behind the painting

Refusing to be sedentary artist: Art, fitness and A Tough Year, but Still Moving