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The landscapes in Falling Upwards explore painting as a contemplative and spiritual practice, where process and meaning are inseparable, in which image and mark-making become a metaphor for lived experience. Both the technique and the subject matter of these paintings evoke life’s disorienting moments – those times that challenge us to adapt, reshape our ways of seeing, and discover new pathways forward. As the title of the exhibition suggests, sometimes falling can be upwards.

My intention is that you feel drawn in to explore the forms, textures and complex tapestry of marks in the works. They are paintings that reveal themselves over time. As you hover between the real and the imagined, you experience a sense of intimacy – with Self, and with nature.

The large paintings of banks of reeds on the lagoon’s edge were made using small brushes and fine, deliberate strokes, each painting being built slowly, one mark at a time. Progress was slow, non-linear, and deeply reflective. What mattered was not speed or efficiency, but attention, acceptance and faith in the process.

The small works in this series were conceived rapidly with loaded brushes or palette knives. Both working methods, though distinct in practice, demanded embodied awareness and trust. I was repeatedly challenged to step into uncertainty, committing to an alternate sense of time and value.

These paintings hold space for both harmony and disruption, order and irregularity, beauty and challenge. The tension between control and surrender inherent in the painting process and the spatial ambiguity of the imagery mirrors life’s paradox that to rise often involves falling.