The Summer 94' Collection

Summer '94 marks the inaugural collection of my body of work - a long-awaited convergence of identity, memory, and technical exploration. The title serves as both a temporal marker and a personal manifesto: ‘94’ honours my year of birth, acknowledging that this collection is the culmination of nearly three decades of observation and accumulated experience. While the collection represents a significant milestone in my journey, the reference to ‘Summer’ imbues the work with a sense of warmth, optimism, and the vibrant energy of a new beginning.

The collection is defined by a rhythmic negotiation between the raw energy of Abstract Expressionism and the disciplined restraint of Minimalism. This duality reflects a lifetime spent between two worlds: the academic precision of architectural studies in Edinburgh and Delft, and the visceral, unhesitating freedom found in the art world.

In these works, I explore experimental composition and the discovery of balance through varied gestural approaches, moving from spontaneous marks to deliberate structural choices. The canvases serve as testing grounds for a diverse palette of emulsion, acrylic, tempera, oil, and spray paint, often manipulated with water. Each medium brings its own chemical personality, requiring a careful balancing act to harmonize their competing textures and drying times. Rather than following a predetermined blueprint, the themes of each piece revealed themselves through the process of layering. Each work became a vessel for personal reflection, surfacing issues and emotions that had been waiting for the "space" to finally emerge.

The abundance of colour throughout this collection is an act of affirmation. To paint in many colours is to insist on the fullness of life - its contradictions, its tenderness, its grief and joy. Colour becomes a language for the layered complexity of human experience, the way a single moment can hold sorrow and light at once. Just as the world cannot be reduced to a single tone, these works embrace multiplicity. Each hue carries its own emotional weight, and in placing them side by side, sometimes in harmony, sometimes in tension, the paintings celebrate everything that is vivid, messy, and deeply human.

From the atmospheric depths of Thalassa to the high-contrast energy of Once a Punk, the collection utilizes a vast spectrum of colour to document a period of intense experimentation. These paintings offer a contemporary lens on my earliest creative impulses, evolving from the graffiti practice of my youth into a mature abstract expression. These paintings are not merely aesthetic exercises; they are the record of an artist finally speaking with the confidence of someone who has spent a long time preparing to be heard.

Summer '94 is more than a debut; it is the moment my hand and mind finally found their collective freedom on the canvas.