For the best part of a year, a 90 × 60 cm unfinished panel has been standing in the corner of my studio, partly hidden behind boxes.
I started it last year, reached an impasse and put it aside. I simply couldn't work out where to take it next.
Recently, I pulled it out again. Perhaps I felt ready to tackle it. Or perhaps I was just tired of looking at the boxes.
The panel already had quite a history: pumice, cement, specialist paint designed for metal, ordinary wall paint and probably a few other things I've forgotten.
From the beginning, I've enjoyed working with different materials, creating unexpected textures and surfaces. But over the past year, my attention has been on developing a coherent body of work, finding the structures, tensions and relationships that make a painting recognisably mine.
That foundation now feels more established, and I'm enjoying bringing a wider range of materials back into the studio.
It's not about trying out different styles. I'm interested in what happens when familiar structures meet less predictable surfaces.
The painting is still unfinished. I have no idea quite where it will end up.
But at least it's no longer hiding behind the boxes.