‘Cold Coffee in North Oxford’,
37 x 25cm, Water soluble oil pastel on paper, 2025.

I used a sketchbook drawing made in a North Oxford coffee shop as the starting point for this piece – and although it’s gone somewhere else, it’s still reflective of that rainy moment.

I wish the outcome was more enigmatic (like a Vuillard or Bonnard?), but I find myself sharpening edges, and bringing shapes into focus – so it’s considered and mindful – yet at stages I deliberately draw, brush, blot  and smear (that’s the beauty of the water soluble pastels) across the work to disrupt my neat composition and nice playful mark making and to open up different ways forward. But at some point you have to stop…