This drawing began not with paper, charcoal, or pen, but with memory.

Years ago, whenever I visited a friend, his granny was always there with wiry humour, watchful eyes, and a sense of gravitas that filled the room. She stayed with me.

I set myself the task of drawing her, not from a photo, but from the layers of recollection. Grey paper, white and black charcoal, pastel, even pen materials layered like memory itself, sometimes sharp, sometimes hazy.

Every line of her face became less about accuracy and more about presence.

It’s strange: in trying to capture her, I realised I was also drawing the feeling she left behind wisdom, endurance, and that glint of humour.

She is long gone, yet here she is again, looking back at us.

Selected for the inaugural The "RP Drawing Prize: 2025 Revealing the Human" specifically celebrates drawing as a direct response to the human, exploring its ability to capture vulnerability and authenticity.

Heaven Sent, Heaven Stole

This portrait seeks to honour George Michael not as celebrity, but as artist: a musician of immense craft, restraint and emotional intelligence.

The pose is deliberate turned slightly away from the viewer, yet meeting us with unmistakable presence reflecting the tension that defined his public life: intimacy offered, privacy defended.

Michael’s work carried both polish and bruise. Beneath the flawless surface of pop lay songs of confession, longing and moral clarity, delivered with a voice capable of both seduction and sorrow.

The painting aims to match that duality: dignity without glamour, atmosphere without sentimentality an image of stature, earned rather than performed.

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My Monochromic Self

Is about using colour to say what faces don’t always manage to. Instead of painting skin as skin-coloured, I push everything into one main tone and let small changes in light, shadow, and texture build the form. It forces me to focus on feeling, presence, and structure rather than surface realism.

I’m interested in that quiet moment when someone looks ordinary but you sense there’s a lot going on underneath. The brushwork stays visible on purpose I like the honesty of paint that shows how it was made, where it hesitates, where it pushes forward.

The backgrounds are kept simple but strong, almost like emotional lighting, to bring the figure forward and create tension.

For me, portraiture isn’t about getting a perfect likeness.

It’s about capturing something real mood, vulnerability, thought so the person feels alive rather than just accurately drawn.

Between Silence & Self

Between Silence & Self sits within my ongoing search for the quiet emotional spaces people carry inside them. I’m drawn to moments that aren’t loud or dramatic, but filled with thought, hesitation, and fragile presence the places where feeling exists before it becomes words.

I allow the body to stretch gently beyond natural proportion, not to distort, but to express vulnerability and longing. The slight lengthening of the neck and forward movement suggest a reaching toward connection, while still holding back.

Colour is central to how I build emotion in my work. I use limited, intense palettes to create an atmosphere rather than a setting, letting the background become a pressure of feeling around the figure. Paint remains visible and alive, so the surface carries breath, movement, and uncertainty.

Rather than chasing perfect likeness, I’m interested in presence that sense of a real person caught in an inner moment. Light moves slowly across the form, revealing tenderness, tension, and quiet strength.

This work reflects how identity often lives in the spaces between holding in and letting out, between silence and self-expression.

I hope the painting invites viewers to pause, recognise something of themselves, and feel the courage it takes simply to be seen.