Painting places that matter

I wrapped up a big batch of commissions recently, and the studio feels strangely empty without them now.

For a while there, I had paintings heading to Scotland, the US, and around New Zealand all sitting around the room at once. It’s always slightly surreal painting places I’ve never been, while also painting places that feel familiar to me because of my own work.

I spend so much of my time painting places connected to my own hikes, travels, and experiences already, so I think that’s why commissions fit so naturally into my practice. At the core of both is really just someone trying to preserve a feeling connected to a place.

The commissions I paint are rarely just about the landscape itself. They’re usually connected to a memory, a trip, a person, or a moment in life someone doesn’t want to lose.

I think that’s what makes certain places important to us. They quietly collect parts of our lives without us noticing.

When I look back at paintings I’ve made over the last few years, I can usually trace them back to a specific feeling before I remember the actual composition. The Milford Track after days of rain. Seeing a kiwi on the Kepler Track before sunrise. A family wedding at Piha. Standing somewhere cold and windswept thinking, “this is ridiculous,” while also not wanting to leave.

I think most paintings start there for me, long before I ever touch a canvas.

Somewhere between movement and memory. Hiking, travelling, long drives, wandering around with a camera, stopping because something catches my eye and refusing to fully let go of it afterwards.

Then months later I’ll still be thinking about the colour of a hill or the shape of shadows somewhere and realise the place never really left.

Maybe that’s what I’m really painting most of the time.

Not just the landscape itself, but the feeling attached to being there in the first place.

They’re less about documenting a place exactly as it looked and more about trying to hold onto how it felt to be there at all.

If you’d like to capture a favourite place in paint too, you can find more information about commissions here.