An Average Day in the Studio

There’s a certain calm that settles over the studio first thing in the morning. Before the brushes are lifted, before the palette comes alive, the space simply waits. Light slowly finds its way across the room, tracing familiar shapes—the jars of brushes, the easel, the half-finished work resting in quiet anticipation.

I never really know how a day will unfold, but the ritual always begins the same way: setting out the colours. Thick oils in every shade I might need, placed beside each other like a conversation waiting to happen. Some days the palette looks almost chaotic, a clash of reds, ochres, blues and greens—other days it feels restrained, deliberate. But it always reflects exactly where my mind is.

The early layers are instinctive. Loose gestures, broad movements, marks that don’t look like much to anyone else but carry the weight of what’s to come. There’s a strange freedom in this stage… the canvas feels huge, open, forgiving. I let myself move without thinking too much, letting the colours fall into place in ways I couldn’t script even if I tried.

As the painting develops, so does the relationship with it. I step back often—more than I paint, some days. The studio fills with shifting light, catching ridges of paint and changing the mood of everything. What looks bold one minute feels quiet the next. I love that unpredictability.

Hours tend to disappear in here. I’ll look up and realise the sun has moved across the wall, shadows stretching in different directions. The palette becomes a record of every decision, every hesitation, every moment I thought I knew exactly what I was doing—and every moment I didn’t.

By late afternoon, the work usually begins to make sense. The chaos settles. The landscape, or figure, or idea starts speaking back. That’s when the studio feels most alive—when the painting stops being a collection of marks and becomes a place, a memory, or an emotion with its own presence.

An “average” day in the studio is never really average. It’s messy and colourful and often wonderfully unpredictable. And somehow, no matter how many hours pass, I always leave feeling like there’s still more to explore tomorrow.