When people watch me paint, especially when I begin with a completely abstract background, they often wonder the same thing:
"How do you know where you're going?"
The honest answer is... I don't. At least, not entirely.
In my latest painting, I started with nothing more than layers of watercolour, random marks, drips and textures. There wasn't a horse waiting to be copied from a reference photo. There wasn't even a sketch. There was simply a surface full of possibilities.
At some point, I began to recognise the horse hidden within the chaos.
Once I saw it, I couldn't unsee it anymore.
That's one of my favourite moments in the creative process because it always feels a little magical, even after years of painting. The challenge then becomes finding the right balance: defining enough shapes for the horse to emerge while preserving the energy and spontaneity that made the abstract background so interesting in the first place.
Technique Isn't About Control
People sometimes assume that expressive painting means working purely from instinct and emotion.
In reality, instinct becomes much more reliable once it's supported by experience.
If I'm able to navigate an abstract painting without panicking, it's because I know the visual principles behind what I'm doing. I understand composition, values, contrast, rhythm, edges and movement well enough to recognise when something is working... and when it isn't.
That doesn't mean I follow a set of rigid rules. Quite the opposite. Knowing the rules gives me permission to bend them, ignore them or completely reinvent them whenever it serves the painting.
The rules don't restrict my freedom. They create it.
Why I Love Happy Accidents
One of the reasons I enjoy working with watercolour, charcoal, ink, acrylic and mixed media is that none of these materials are completely predictable. Water spreads. Charcoal breaks. Ink bleeds. Brushes leave unexpected textures. Sometimes a brushstroke is far too large. Sometimes a drip goes exactly where I didn't want it to. And sometimes those "mistakes" become my favourite part of the painting.
In this horse, several marks that were already present in the abstract background ended up reinforcing the movement of the neck or suggesting the legs without any planning on my part.
I could never have designed them deliberately. The painting gave them to me. That's why I don't try to eliminate every accident. I try to notice them.
Learning So You Can Let Go
People often ask why I've spent so many years exploring different mediums instead of specialising in just one.
The answer is simple: every medium teaches me something different.
Oil taught me patience. Watercolour taught me to accept uncertainty. Charcoal taught me to simplify. Ink taught me confidence. Each one expanded my visual vocabulary and gave me another way of responding when the unexpected happens.
Technique, to me, has never been about becoming more precise. It's about becoming more adaptable.
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When a Painting Doesn't Work
Of course, not every experiment succeeds.
Sometimes I push too far. Sometimes I lose the energy that attracted me to the painting in the first place. Sometimes the accidents remain... just accidents.
But even then, the painting has done its job.
It has taught me something I couldn't have learned any other way. That's why failure doesn't scare me as much as it used to. At worst, it's an experiment I won't repeat.
Which simply means I've learned something new.
Watch the Horse Emerge
If you're curious to see how this particular horse slowly appeared from an abstract background, I've shared the entire process in my latest YouTube video.
You can watch it here and see how random marks, unexpected accidents and a little patience gradually transformed chaos into a horse.
And if you're interested in developing this way of working yourself, you'll find the same philosophy throughout my online course. I don't teach recipes or formulas to copy. I teach the visual tools that allow you to understand what you're doing, so that one day you'll be free to trust your own intuition too.