Returning

There is a banksia branch sitting in my studio at the moment. It's not the first banksia I've painted, and I have a feeling it won't be the last. For a long time, I assumed that painting the same subjects again and again would eventually become repetitive. Surely there would come a point where I'd painted enough banksias, enough favourite jugs, enough leaves gathered on a morning walk. Instead, the opposite has happened.

The more familiar a subject becomes, the more I seem to notice. Most of the things I paint aren't chosen because they're rare or unusual. They're chosen because they've become part of my everyday life. A favourite vase. A banksia picked up on a walk. A plant that's sat on the coffee table for years. Living alongside these objects means I get to know them over time. I notice them in different light, from different angles and in different seasons.

When I first started painting still life, I think I was mostly concerned with getting the object right. Does the shape look convincing? Are the proportions accurate? Have I captured what I'm looking at? Those questions still matter, but they no longer feel like the whole story. Now I'm much more interested in the small things. How one leaf overlaps another. The way a branch twists as it reaches towards the light. How a warm green suddenly looks cooler beside a terracotta pot. The subtle rhythm created by repeating shapes. These aren't things I necessarily noticed the first time I painted a banksia. They reveal themselves gradually, each time I return.

I've realised that familiarity doesn't mean I've stopped looking. If anything, it allows me to look more carefully. Because I already know the subject, I'm no longer distracted by trying to understand what it is. Instead, I can pay attention to how it exists in the light, how its colours shift throughout the day, and how its shapes relate to everything around it. It's a slower way of seeing.

Perhaps that's why I don't worry about repeating myself anymore. The painting may begin with another banksia, another jug or another familiar object from around my home, but the experience is always new. Each painting becomes another observation rather than another version.

I'm beginning to think that's what my practice is really about. Not searching for extraordinary subjects, but returning to ordinary ones with fresh eyes. Because the more often I return, the more they seem to reveal.