Soul Steps

Soul Steps, the path of our soul. The stone steps of Kyoto monasteries captivated me from when I first saw them in the background of a reference photo for a commissioned portrait at the end of 2025. I immediately started a painting about the soul's transition through life, moving from the concrete to the ethereal. Almost as soon as I started painting it, we were gifted tickets to Japan, and we were climbing those steps within a month.

This painting also afforded me the opportunity to use some skills from my days of painting scenery for theatre and film. In particular, it brought me back to painting backdrops with Scenic Studios in Melbourne at the end of last century! It was the closest I ever got to working in a Renaissance painting studio, working in traditional scenic art techniques, which are actually quite akin to large-scale gouache. Such joy!!

Artists follow an undefined but unwavering path that seems irresistible to us. Driven by the nature of obsession, obsession becomes the path to clarity. Seeking meaning out of uncertainty, we persistently return to the same questions, scratching at the itch until it yields the light.