black chalk on paper with wash, 2013
graphite on paper, 2013
graphite on paper, 2015
graphite and watercolour on paper, 2016
graphite on paper, 2017
black chalk on laid paper, 2013
graphite on paper, 2015
ink on paper with wash, 2012
black and white chalk on paper with blue wash, 2012
charcoal on paper with wash, 2012
black and white chalk on paper with wash, 2013
charcoal on paper with wash, 2013
graphite on laid paper, 2012
graphite on laid paper, 2012
graphite on laid paper, 2012
graphite on paper, 2012
graphite on paper, 2013
graphite on paper, 2013
graphite on paper, 2013
graphite on paper, 2012-13
graphite on paper, 2013
graphite on paper, 2013
graphite on paper, 2012
ink on paper with wash, 2012
graphite on paper, 2012
graphite on laid paper, 2012
red and black chalk on paper with wash, 2013
black chalk on paper, 2013
oil on panel, 59.7 x 59.7 cm, 2022
oil on panel, 59.7 x 59.7 cm, 2022
oil on panel, 50.9 x 40.6 cm, 2022-23
Price - please contact artist
This painting refers to an early episode in the life of Christ when the Holy Family sought refuge from King Herod in Egypt. The bucolic landscape depicts the Holy Family taking refuge from the harsh Egyptian heat. A pastoral scene is established by the flock of sheep on the right and the boy shepherd riding an ox centre. These elements foreground the role of the as yet infant Christ as the Great Shepherd.
The Roman and Egyptian ruins on the right work in tandem with the trees on the left to frame the composition, including the monolithic pyramids, while equally conveying the fleeting transience of empires.
Meanwhile, Christ (with his family) is placed in compositional opposition to these ruins - Christ, who, by contrast, restores all things. He is the seed of the New Covenant planted in the land where the people of Israel were once enslaved, so that He might emerge as a new Moses, who brings his people true freedom from spiritual bondage: ‘…out of Egypt have I called my Son,’ (Hos. 11:1).
The painting borrows from pictorial elements and colour schemes typical of 18th century painters such as Giovanni Paolo Panini, Hubert Robert and Richard Wilson. The Holy Family group is borrowed from Titian’s Holy Family with St. John the Baptist (c. 1521).
oil on panel, 35.6 x 28 cm, 2022-23
Price - please contact artist
The goddess of hunting and the moon, Diana, spots a young Aeolian shepherd sleeping by his herds. Falling in love with him, she asks Jupiter to cause him to fall into an eternal sleep so that she can visit him every night.
This is a pastoral scene that pays homage to the nocturnal landscapes of the 18th century, as well as a compositional style reminiscent of Richard Wilson. The figures are borrowed from Pierre Subleyras’ Diane et Endymion (1740).
oil on panel, 56 x 76 cm, 2022-23
Price - please contact artist
This painting depicts the ancient Greek hero Bellerophon astride the winged horse Pegasus, slaying the dreaded Chimera. The hero effortlessly plunges his spear through the throat of the beast’s lion head, while its goat half snorts out fire and its serpent’s tail writhes in agony, its head dashed against a broken architectural fragment. The hapless remains of the beast’s previous victims lie on the floor of the valley waste below.
The triumphalism of Bellerophon’s pose renders his imminent fate all the more tragic, since he would afterwards attempt to fly up to Olympus and assume the status of a god. His hubris, however, would be checked by Jupiter’s thunder bolts and the god-like youth would be thrown down to earth. The influence of Rubens, in particular his Decius Mus Cycle, was an important influence on the execution of this painting’s composition and aesthetic.
oil on panel, 53.3 x 76 cm, 2022-23
Price - please contact artist
The goddess Venus sleeps laggardly in the lap of a dappled woodland grove, resting lazily, though troubled, and leaning against her golden chariot, watched over attentively by her concerned attendant Cupid. In the distant, sun-drenched landscape we see her lover Adonis being pursued by the boar.
Typically, painters depicting the subject of Venus and Adonis would focus on the hunter taking leave of his beloved, or of Venus weeping over his savaged body after he has been killed by the boar. Instead, here we are led to entertain two possibilities: the painting either depicts Venus’ prophetic dream of Adonis’ untimely death, played out before the viewer in a pictorial conceit, or we are seeing the actual event take place as she sleeps, incognisant of the unfolding tragedy that she warned him so vehemently about. The real and unreal are conflated within an idyllic pictorial space while all but her troubled expression belie the horror of the moment. Even the title of the work is ambiguous. It could either be taken as Venus’ prophetic dream, or as a troubled nightmare that harangues the goddess with uneasy slumber while she awaits her hero’s return.
Rubens’ renditions on the subject of Venus and Adonis, as well as his treatment of the female nude (in paintings such as Diana and her Nymphs Spied upon by Satyrs) were integral influences on the construction of this painting.
oil on canvas, 67 x 82 cm, 2017
This is a portrait of the artist garbed in the trappings of the typical Italian Renaissance man of letters: blue damask silk sleeves and a black, fur-lined robe and cap. He holds a wax statue of the Farnese Hercules in his gloved right hand while in his left, a brass compass. A piece of parchment, pinned to his coat, bears the celebrated ancient Greek maxim: ‘Do nothing in excess.’ Appropriate advice to live by, though arguably the appeal to moderation has been discarded, as the artist leans a little too confidently on a Corinthian capital. Beneath the inked saying is the formula for the Golden Ratio - a geometrical equation that was tantamount to a humanist creed during the Renaissance, as it was seen to underpin so much of the beauty of the created order.
The objects held by the artist spell out a statement about his philosophy - that to produce truth and beauty in art is to measure and imitate the patterns of the cosmos, encompassed by and perfected in the human body, as exemplified by the wax statue. Man is the measure of all things.
The portrait’s aesthetic pays homage to Raphael and other High Renaissance portrait artists such as Lorenzo Lotto.
oil on panel, 90.2 x 90.2 cm, 2022-23
Price - please contact artist
The Holy Family sits nestled among marble ruins in a pastoral landscape. St. Joseph characteristically embodies a protective figure while excluded compositionally from the group of the Virgin, the infant Christ and St. John the Baptist - an iconographic tradition observed by the pillar lying on the ground bottom left, used to demarcate St. Joseph’s lesser theological importance from the three central figures.
Natural elements in the tondo act to symbolise broad theological concepts related to Christ’s role. The Holy Family is anchored to the centre of the composition by the verdant copse of trees that frames the figures. Coupled with the fertile landscape, notions that the Messiah’s first coming would herald a golden age characterised by lush gardens blossoming in the desert are well documented in the poetry of Old Testament prophecy. Indeed, on the left, a falling water brook bears connotations to Christ as the Water of Life - the antithesis to the barren and dying fig tree on the right, a traditional symbol of original sin.
Turning to the figures in the composition, the infant Christ places a foot triumphantly on a glass sphere, representing the cosmos, suggesting his role as both Salvator Mundi (‘Saviour of the World’) and Rex Mundi (‘King of the World’). The sphere has crushed a serpent, symbolising the devil, underneath it, harking to Christ’s ultimate defeat of Satan as prophesied in Genesis: ‘he will bruise thy head’. Such imagery also bears to mind Psalm 110: ‘Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool’.
Christ’s role in undoing Satan’s work in the Garden of Eden is recognised by St. John the Baptist, who kneels before him, accompanied by his typical attributes. He holds a reed cross with a lamb at his feet and a scroll in Latin reading ‘ECCE AGNUS DEI’ (‘Behold the Lamb of God’). Jesus acknowledges his cousin’s piety by raising his hand in a sign of benediction.
The Virgin’s relaxed pose is both feminine and commanding, and the ornate Corinthian capital on which she leans lends her an elegant lyricism. The unfurling acanthus leaves of this order appropriately complement her fruitfulness, both physically and spiritually, as the Theotokos, as well as her role as the sacred feminine within the Christian story.
The Virgin gazes transfixed upon her son. Indeed, the silent conversations in the composition follow a zig-zag pattern as St. Joseph looks at the Virgin, the Virgin at Christ, and Christ at St. John the Baptist. The whole composition is further unified by two intercepting triangles pointing in opposite directions to create a sense of balance and symmetry. Triangulation is a compositional tool conventionally used in sacred art to echo the concept of the Holy Trinity.
The aesthetic of the painting was informed by the attitudes and poses of the Holy Family in Michelangelo’s Doni Tondo and the faces of Leonardo da Vinci, while the landscape adopts a distinctly Venetian colour scheme reminiscent of Titian or Palma del Vecchio.
oil on canvas, 119.5 x 88 cm, 2022-23
Price - please contact artist
This painting depicts King Solomon lost in the throes of divine rapture as he kneels before the newly built temple in Jerusalem. A hand lightly touches his heart in a gesture of ecstatic reverence, his eyes rolled heavenward as he utters his prayer of dedication, as recounted in the First Book of Kings.
The painting’s Baroque style was a deliberate artistic choice to honour the spirit of the biblical scene, characterised by a marked sense of elation and regal pomp. The effusive interplay of light, colour and figural movement was drawn especially from Rubens’ colourful eruptions of Counter-Reformation extravagance, as seen in his Marie de’ Medici Cycle, Decius Mus Cycle and Eucharist Cycle.
The painting reads from left to right, meeting the opposite direction of the procession. The large sweep of red drapery covering a colossal column on the left masks a radiant display of divine glory, which bathes the king in a golden white light. The eye is then led down Solomon’s robe: a waterfall of rippling gold damask silk and embroidered turquoise, intermingling an ecclesiastical griccia pattern with a carpet of pomegranates. A page boy, caught in equal rapture, holds up the train of the robe’s heavy, ermine-lined hem.
A hefty man carries the menorah into the temple in the background (licence has been taken here - only priests could touch the temple objects); the Levitical priests solemnly process, bearing the Ark of the Covenant; three men sacrifice an ox with the wide swing of an axe (borrowed from Rubens’ Massacre of the Innocents and his Decius Mus Consulting the Auspices); and flying overhead, two angels, one blowing a trumpet, survey the general splendour of the scene, and shower the king with gold from a cornucopia (borrowed from Rubens’ Coronation of Marie de’ Medici).
The architecture is also appropriately Baroque, utilising the so-called Solomonic column with its undulating helical lines to divide up the picture plane, as well as a colonnade of arches adorned with swags of oak leaves hung from Composite capitals to create a sense of rhythmical grandeur that complements the procession’s ascent towards the Holy of Holies.
Imprimatura and underpainting: after preparing the panel with size (rabbit skin glue) and ground (lead white paint and chalk), a thin wash of varying amounts of yellow ochre, burnt umber or sienna (depending on the amount of warmth desired) is applied over the ground. This is called the imprimatura layer. The basic forms of the composition are then blocked in with the same colour. Some paintings (such as the King Solomon), are painted with colour directly onto the imprimatura after applying merely a linear underpainting without any tone.
Colour underpainting: basic forms are further developed and appplied with a lean layer of colour.
Continuation of Step 2. Development of pictorial elements. Compositional problems and colour relationships are worked out.
Colour overpainting: components are given greater detail and fatter layers of colour are applied.
Glazing: transparent layers of pigment are applied with binder to certain elements of the painting to add depth and complexity of colour.
Completion and varnish: final details are added or changed and colours and tones are nuanced with dry layers. The final painting is varnished with mastic.
