Studio Insights - July 2025
CREATE: What I’ve created/done & what I’m working on.
INSPIRE: What art has inspired me.
LEARN: What I’m learning to develop my practice.
PLAN: What I’m planning next.
“It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.”
This month was a crazy busy one as I switched into full creation mode for my solo exhibition - creating a painting every day and posting to Instagram more consistently than I’ve ever done before. I also had a few friends hosting exhibitions, and I started conversations on collaborating with some videographers.
Table of Contents:
CREATE: 30 Studies Challenge
INSPIRE: Space Age, Where The River Bends to Mother
LEARN: Painting Challenge Reflection
PLAN: Videographer Collaboration
CREATE: 30 Studies Challenge
In my entry last month, I set myself the crazy challenge of making a painting start to finish and posting to Instagram every day of July. I wanted to show the great breadth of references I had captured while delivering, and with limited time left to create this, it seemed the only way to make it happen.
Challenge rules:
Each study to be completed start to finish within 2 hours, or less if specified
Using only Yellow Ochre, Cadmium Red, Ultramarine Blue, Burnt Umber and White
Each scene and challenge is randomly assigned. I may choose an appropriately sized panel to paint on from the pool.
Timelapse & Final result to be posted every day by 1 pm.
Honestly, when I came up with this challenge, I thought I was completely stupid. I was convinced I’d skip a day here or there, or not make it to the end and give up. I’ve never tried something this ambitious before, nor have I ever managed to stick to such a strict painting routine.
And yet somehow, I showed up and got it done. 30 paintings, 30 days. I painted every morning except for Sundays when I had to work my other job - I created two in one of the other days to compensate for that. This meant I was working 7 days a week for the entire month. Super exhausting and not ideal, I was certainly ready for a break by the end. But I’d just had the most consistently productive month of my entire career to date, and the results far exceeded my expectations! This challenge was such a big deal that it deserves two sections - I'll talk about how it changed the way I paint in the ‘learn’ section below.
A huge thank you to all the amazing support that I received on Instagram throughout this month, it really meant a lot to me and kept me going on the days where I really couldn’t be bothered! I loved so many of the paintings I made, can't wait to show them all to you in frames!
Click to expand:
INSPIRE: Space Age, Where The River Bends to Mother
Even through all the busyness, I still managed to make it to a few exhibitions this month - I had a few creative friends opening their own solo shows, which was exciting! I always try my best to go along to support my creative community.
Space Age - Bella Foster
Bella’s first solo exhibition, hosted at Thistle Hall. This was a unique combination of photography and paintings displayed together beautifully. The whole feel and style of the exhibition was super cohesive and thoughtfully put together. A surprising detail about Bella’s paintings is that they’re all freehand - no masking tape used! Very impressive attention to detail.
Where The River Bends To Mother - Oliver Budd
It’s always a privilege to see a fellow Punaka member hosting their own solo exhibition. Oliver’s work has a beautifully atmospheric quality to it, like a ghostly dream fading from memory. I love the depth of subtle layered colours and textures, which all worked perfectly together across the whole exhibition.
LEARN: Painting Challenge Reflection
As I’ve said earlier, this challenge was extremely valuable and powerful. I felt myself grow as an artist from day 1 to day 30. I learnt a lot, but I wanted to focus on three key things - Accountability, Limitation, Repetition.
Accountability
The dreaded boss. We’ve all been there, from parent, to teacher, to manager. “If only I could have the freedom to do what I want”, we say. What most don’t realise is that sometimes not having a boss is just as difficult. By setting the expectation of posting every day, and allowing the challenges to be decided ‘randomly’ (by the painting gods), I felt like I had a boss for the first time. And I loved it. Being told what to paint, with what technique and for how long was so strangely freeing. It took out so much decision-making that would slow me down, and forced me to work on days when I really couldn’t be bothered. Some days I got a stupidly difficult challenge, or a nonsensical combination. I shook my fist at the painting gods and soldiered on, only to find myself pleasantly surprised by the final result.
Limitation
This lesson was continuously hammered into me this month - Less is More. With only 2 hours (or less!) to paint, I learnt to be more efficient and confident with my brushwork and selective with detail. By the end, I had a much easier time picking out the important elements from a scene and ignoring the rest. Having clear constraints on my technique, palette and time forced me to get extremely creative in some pieces and follow a direction I never would normally consider. Most of the time, more limitations were better - one of my favourites of the lost was done in just 25 minutes!
Repitition
Showing up every day certainly had its effect on me. There was a lot of repeated similarity amongst the challenge variance - the colour palette, subject matter, relative panel size and time spent painting. Knowing I was making so many paintings, I became far less attached to each end result and just got in my reps. I got familiar with the process and became comfortable with the timer. One of the very last challenges I got was no limitation, just 2 hours. I loved this because it felt like a ‘final exam’, where I tried to apply everything I learnt over the month. I really felt the final result was significantly better than if I’d done it on day 1.
PLAN: Videographer Collaboration
This month, I began meeting with a couple of super talented creatives over at Sector22, who will be working on making a video for my exhibition. They’ll be following me throughout the project, capturing and creating a narrative on the whole process. I’m super excited to be working with them and to share the end result with you all!