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Shaping the Light
First Formative Series · 2023–2024
Illusion
Landmark Work · 2023
Study Piece · Not Available for Sale
First Grounding
Shaping the Light
Shaping the Light marks the point when I chose to fully commit to painting.
The series begins with Illusion, a piece created after my first formal training, which changed the way I approached the material itself. I learned to build an image through masses, to leave certain brushstrokes visible, and to stop automatically correcting everything that strayed from the initial plan.
For a long time, this first painting defined my visual identity. Looking back, I understand why. It already held a direction that would remain present in my work: beginning with what is there, organizing, adjusting, and allowing a form to emerge that did not yet exist.
The works that followed developed as I built my practice. I was learning to work with greater consistency, to return to a canvas when something did not hold, and to give experimentation a real place in the process. I was looking for a kind of painting capable of drawing the eye through its presence while retaining enough material depth that the image could not be reduced to its first impression.
Shaping the Light remains an early foundation. Several essential elements of my work were already there: the instinct to revisit a piece, the attention given to material, and the understanding that a direction is built through the gestures we choose to make, one at a time.
Early Shifts
The gesture gradually opens up.
The subjects change, and so do the formats. I begin to take greater freedom in the way the images are constructed. Some works are driven by movement, others by denser material or a more fragmented composition.
Vortex, Fission, and Björk, Fossora reflect this period of exploration. I am no longer working only to create a strong image. I am learning to recognize what truly allows a painting to hold together.
Vortex · Fission · Björk, Fossora
Cobain
Original Painting · 2023
Giving Myself More Freedom
In Cobain, words, marks, and contrasts take on a greater presence.
Music also becomes more central to the way I work. It shapes the rhythm, the breaks, and the energy of the image.
I begin to paint more freely while still needing the image to hold together.
The Animal as Presence
With Insomnia and Lenitas, the animal gradually begins to occupy a different place in my work.
Insomnia came from a state I know well: the body is tired, but the mind is still running.
I often had too many ideas to fully switch off. I would think about the projects ahead, what I wanted to try, and what I was eager to return to the next day.
Lenitas, on the other hand, came together quickly and instinctively. I appreciate the sense of peace and inwardness it carries. It showed me that an image could hold without needing to be worked over for a long time or burdened with too many intentions.
Looking at them today, I see two lessons that would remain important in my work: allowing a presence to carry an inner state, and recognizing when it is no longer necessary to keep adding to it.
Insomnia
Original Painting · 2023
Lenitas
Original Painting · 2023
With This Way and Always Stronger, painting begins to move closer to what I was going through.
I was still working largely by instinct. I had not yet developed the narrative structure that would come later, but certain questions were becoming more present: how to keep moving forward, how to find support in what resists, and how to choose a direction when standing still no longer feels right.
These works mark an important shift. Painting gradually becomes a place where I can give form to a lived tension without needing to explain everything.
A More Personal Direction
This Way
Original Painting · 2023
Always Stronger
Original Painting · 2023
Pentimento
Original Painting · 2024
Pentimento closes out the series, although I did not know it yet when I painted it.
This piece was created over an earlier work that was not moving in the direction I was looking for. I chose to rework it. Some parts were covered, while others remained visible and became part of the new composition.
The title comes directly from this process.
In painting, a pentimento is the trace of an earlier intention that remains visible beneath the image that has taken its place. Looking back, the word came to hold a meaning I had not anticipated.
Soon after, I became fully invested in a gallery project I sincerely believed in. The dynamic of that collaboration gradually pulled me away from what I truly wanted to build. More and more of my energy went into organizing, justifying, and repairing what was unraveling around me. Painting eventually lost its place.
When I returned to it, a direction already present in my work became much clearer. Creating was no longer only about building an image. It became a way of reclaiming my own direction and choosing what I would build from what remained.
Discover the Born of Our Hands series