In this blog, I share my mixed media painting process. I touch upon the introduction of birds into my semi-abstract Cornish landscapes, and how my artwork evolves through intuition, exploration and discovery.

My creative process is rarely straightforward. It’s not a simple case of “here’s my inspiration and here’s the painting.” I wish it were that tidy! Instead, it often begins with a feeling — something evoked by a place or an experience in the Cornish landscape — and then comes the challenge: how to translate that feeling into paint.

As a semi-abstract artist working in mixed media, the land here in Cornwall is both muse and mystery. It holds moods, textures, stories — things that surface slowly when I’m in the studio.

For me, painting is less about execution and more about discovery. It’s an unearthing — a process of finding out what the piece wants to become. That includes not only the what and how, but also a deep listening: paying attention to what the painting itself is asking for as it evolves.

Paul Klee once said, “Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible.”
That thought feels close to what I experience — a quiet conversation between myself and the work, as it slowly reveals its truth.

This process can’t be rushed. Often, I’ll spend long stretches just sitting with a painting, staring, thinking, deciphering the next step. Sometimes it demands something bold — pulling it apart or taking it in a completely new direction. Other times, it’s about patience and subtle, careful adjustments.

Mixed media painting is wonderfully unpredictable. It invites both experimentation and surrender

Recently, I’ve begun to introduce birds into my semi-abstract work — shapes and silhouettes that move through the spaces of my Cornish-inspired landscapes. These birds feel like messengers or fragments of memory, threading movement and energy through the composition.

At the moment, I’m working on a painting that features a blackbird. I’ve been in dialogue with this piece for weeks, pushing and pulling its elements, searching for the right balance. Today, I finally accepted something I had suspected for a while: the bird was simply too large.

That realisation triggered a sequence of changes. I turned the bird so it’s now seen from below, swooping across the canvas — and that single shift altered the entire rhythm of the painting.

It also prompted a new question: What exactly is the bird flying through?
That led me back into my sketchbooks, exploring shapes, marks and textures that might ground the piece and bring it closer to what it wants to say.

The creative process is often imagined as something romantic — the artist struck by inspiration and the painting appearing as if by magic. In reality, it’s a winding journey of exploration, trial and error, and yes, sometimes failure.

There’s a lot of thinking, questioning, adjusting and quiet contemplation. Robert Motherwell once said, “The function of the artist is to express reality as felt.”
That feeling — that truth — often emerges only after considerable struggle.

I’ve come to believe that the best work grows out of that tension — from wrestling with uncertainty, making mistakes, and letting the artwork evolve in its own time. Occasionally, a painting falls into place with surprising ease, but even then, it’s usually the result of all the unseen searching that came before.

Mixed media, especially, rewards openness. Layers build, fade, reappear. Unexpected marks become the heartbeat of the piece. Every decision leads to five new questions.

Ultimately, for me, art is all about process. Each finished work is just one moment along the path — a glimpse into where I am right now. Every painting becomes a marker by the wayside, a small window into the ongoing conversation between myself, the materials and the world around me.

Georgia O’Keeffe beautifully expressed something I feel deeply:
“I found I could say things with colour and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way — things I had no words for.”

And that’s exactly how it feels — each painting one page in a lifelong exploration of seeing, feeling and becoming.