Layers and Patience

Every piece I make begins as something unfinished on purpose. I lay down paper, then pigment, then wait. The waiting is the part nobody photographs, but it is where the work actually happens.

When I rush a layer, the surface tells on me. The texture flattens, the colour goes muddy, and the piece loses the quiet I was after. So I've learned to leave the studio while a layer sets — to walk, to look at something else, to come back with different eyes.

Patience isn't a virtue in my practice so much as a material. It's as present in the finished piece as the gold leaf or the clay.