On beginning without certainty: A note on attention, preparation, and not knowing

I used to believe that clarity preceded work, that one arrived at the studio already knowing what needed to be done, and that painting was largely a matter of execution. Experience has taught me otherwise.

I am often asked whether I plan what I am going to paint, or whether I follow a set of drawings laid out in advance. The answer is always the same. I never know what the finished work will look like. What I do know is that I am called to paint, to place colour beside colour, and to allow the unexpected to occur.

There is a necessary element of free fall in this process. A painter must accept a certain degree of peril each time they begin. Without it, something essential is lost. Painting, for me, is not unlike moving through a day. I know that I must get up. I have an impulse toward beauty, toward a certain quality of attention. But I do not know exactly how the day will unfold, nor do I wish to.

What happens along the way feeds everything: my experience, my memory, my work. I decide what to retain, what to release, and what, eventually, to show.

As for mapping things out in advance, that has never interested me. To plot every step feels naïve, even restrictive. It risks killing the spontaneity that gives a painting its life. I prefer to remain responsive, alert to what arises rather than obedient to a plan.

That said, this freedom is not casual. In the past, I feared I did not have the skill to draw properly, so I worked relentlessly at it. I lacked confidence in composition, so I studied and refined it. Colour once felt elusive, so I stayed with it, day after day, until it no longer resisted me in the same way. I still practice all of these things. I always will.

This is where the work actually happens. Not in certainty, but in preparation that allows uncertainty to exist without panic. The finished painting often carries no visible trace of this beginning, yet it is shaped entirely by it.

This is not something I was taught. It is something I had to live through, repeatedly, before I could recognise its value.