The Space Between Us
This piece explores the idea of connection, something I have wanted to paint for a long time.
I like to sit with an idea for a while, letting it grow and cultivate before it becomes a portrait series. For me, art is not just about painting a pretty picture, it is about telling a story, building a narrative, or responding to something deeper.
Being predominantly a portrait artist, I always want there to be meaning behind what I do.
To explain this one properly, I need to rewind a little.
Last year, I painted around the theme of wonder, and after that, I felt pulled to try bringing two figures into one composition for the first time properly.
While working on it, I kept jumping from one face to the other. Honestly, I think my ADHD really works in my favour when I paint. I cannot concentrate on just one area, so I naturally jump around the canvas, and somehow, what starts out looking really lo-fi and chaotic slowly builds into something much more detailed and connected.
Disconnected colours start finding each other, strokes start carving through. I love when paint feels like paint, alive, fluid, full of energy, the same way I love using the palette knife, slicing through the surface.
Finding sitters is always hard. Set-up, direction, location, all of it. And by the time that is sorted, often the energy and drive I had for the idea slips away (classic ADHD life).
In my day job as an art director, I work a lot with Generative AI and Image Generation. These have become the tools of a modern-day art director, like having an extra pair of hands or an entire creative department sometimes.
When thinking about this piece, I realised that through AI, I could create infinite worlds and imagine things beyond what would be possible to set up in real life.
So I decided to apply that thinking to the development of my reference images.
I had a particular look in mind, a particular angle, the way I wanted them to gaze at each other. I also wanted the figures to feel androgynous.
I set the direction just like I would on a shoot, lighting, mood, everything, but in this case using Leonardo AI to generate a reference image.
That was the beginning, but my mission was to bring humanity back into it.
To add the emotion, the soul, the rawness that AI always misses.
I "humanised" it. And honestly, it felt so exciting to work this way. The final painting has so much more depth, heart, and feeling than the original reference.
How is that possible if it started with AI?
Maybe because AI can only simulate based on its reference bank, but humans respond with real emotion.
The piece has travelled through the digital hemisphere and landed back in human hands, with a real human response.
It is ironic really. All portrait painting is, in a way, just an emulation or a representation.
Maybe that is what I have done here. Represented two people, two people who are not traditionally seen enough in portraiture.
Androgynous, fluid, connected.
That is why this painting is called
The Space Between Us.
….
>>> It is about the silent, powerful connection that happens between two people when labels fall away.
The space between them is full of emotion, full of humanity, full of freedom, and full of a kind of quiet love.
That invisible thread of recognition, longing, and tenderness that passes between two souls when the world falls away.
This painting is for everyone who has ever lived in that space. It is a space filled not with emptiness but with everything that matters. This piece has been a real labour of love and emotion from start to finish.
Thank you for stepping into it with me.
The Space Between Us
Oil on heavyweight 300gsm Fabriano Tela Oil Paper
(Off-White) 50 x 65cm