Drift: From Rise to Letting Go…

Friday night, 5pm. I swung the daylight lamp round, took a quick reference photo, and started painting. No plan. No overthinking. Just a need to switch off and let the work carry me.

Ever since painting Rise - an impromptu portrait of Qui - I’d been itching to turn the brush back on myself. Rise had come from a quick, unplanned photograph and the energy of painting it in one go. I love that spontaneity. It’s the same as when you’re playing guitar and stop thinking about the chords - the moment you let go, that’s when the magic happens. Painting can have exactly the same charge.

This is my first self-portrait in years, the last one painted back in 2022 during Birmingham Open Studios. Looking at them side by side now, the change is striking. The work feels freer, bolder, more instinctive. I’m leaning into abstraction, mixing unexpected colours into the face, choosing them for how they feel rather than how they appear in reality.

That freedom carried into the technical side too. I had fun with the palette knives, especially trying to capture my current fluoro green hair - a challenge in oils. In the end, I mixed viridian with lemon yellow, a touch of cerulean, and titanium white, and it came remarkably close. I’ve been living in greens and violets this week, and their harmony feels alive here.

Life has shifted a lot since that last self-portrait - where I live, who I share my life with, the rhythm of my days. All for the better. I feel grounded, happy, content. And I think Drift holds that. It’s not about rising - it’s about letting go. Allowing yourself to move without resistance. Floating downstream.

Right now, Drift is hanging at nook exactly as it left the studio, still fixed to the drawing board I painted it on. I didn’t even take it off before hanging. There’s something raw and immediate about that. It’s sparked an idea: Drawing Board Sessions - a future exhibition where every piece is shown exactly as it was made, fresh from the board, mid-process, alive with that first burst of energy.

For me, Drift isn’t just a self-portrait. It’s a record of a night spent in complete flow, proof that sometimes the best work happens when you let the tide take you.

Drift
Self-portrait, oil on board
Started 5:00pm / Finished 00:37am
Friday 1st August 2025
Currently on show at • nook • gallery & studios, Kings Heath, Birmingham (8 - 31 August 2025)