Flying to Athens: it all began with a sketch 35000miles above the UK

The journey behind the paintings

There is a part of an exhibition that you rarely see in the finished photograph.

Long before a painting reaches an exhibition wall, there are months of work in the studio — building layers, scraping them back, shifting colour, adding marks and sometimes stepping away from a painting until I understand what it needs next.

Then comes the moment when it leaves.

For Platforms Project in Athens, three paintings travelled from my studio in the UK to Greece. It felt like an important step for the work — taking paintings that had developed through ideas of landscape, memory, travel and place and placing them within an international exhibition alongside artists from around the world.

My paintings often begin with a memory of somewhere I've been. Sometimes it is a view from an aeroplane; sometimes a landscape, a fragment of architecture or a particular quality of light. But the finished painting is never intended to simply recreate that place.

I'm interested in what remains.

The atmosphere. The sense of space. A fleeting moment of light. The memory of being somewhere and the way that memory changes over time.

That is why I find the journey of a painting so fascinating.

Once it leaves my studio, it becomes independent of me.

From the studio floor to Athens

There is, of course, a very practical side to exhibiting internationally.

Paintings are photographed, measured, labelled, wrapped and carefully packaged. Frames are protected, paperwork checked and arrangements made for their journey. After spending so long with a painting, handing it over for transportation always feels slightly strange.

This time, I was travelling with them.

Arriving in Athens and seeing the exhibition come together was an entirely different experience from seeing the paintings in my studio. Suddenly they were part of a much wider international conversation.

And that is one of the reasons I wanted to be there.

Not simply to exhibit, but to meet other artists, see new work, listen to conversations and discover how my paintings feel within a different cultural and artistic environment.

### When a painting begins a new journey

I often wonder what happens when someone encounters a painting without knowing the story behind it.

Will they see a landscape?

Will they respond to the colour or movement?

Will something in it remind them of somewhere completely different?

I hope so.

The personal story behind a painting can add another layer, but ultimately I want the work to stand on its own. A painting that began with one place can become part of another person's memory.

That, for me, is one of the most exciting things about making art.

A painting can begin quietly in a studio in the UK and, months later, find itself on a wall in Athens.

The journey doesn't finish when I put down my brush.

It continues wherever the painting goes next.

And Athens is the latest chapter.