I’ve always resisted having my photograph taken – but these artist studio photos became a way of documenting the space
Part of that is personal — age, the lines that come with it, the way the camera fixes things you’d rather leave fluid. But more than that, I’ve always believed the work should speak for itself. It’s never really been about me.
So having professional photographs taken in the studio felt, for a long time, unnecessary. Something to put off.
But seeing the space through another lens changed that.
What I hadn’t realised was how much the studio holds. Not just materials, but process. The quiet order within what looks like chaos. The way light moves across the space during the day. The small, repeated arrangements that become part of how the work is made.
Ellie captured that beautifully.
There’s an honesty in these images — the brushes worn from use, the surfaces marked and reworked, the moments between paintings. It’s not a styled version of the studio, but the space as it actually exists. And in that, something of the work itself becomes visible.
Even the photographs of me feel different in that context. Not posed, not separate — just part of the space where the paintings happen.
It’s easy to get caught up in making and forget to step back. Seeing the studio this way made me recognise how much it has shaped the work over time — how the environment and the paintings are inseparable.
This is where the work begins. Not on the canvas, but here — in the light, the materials, and the rhythm of the space.
