Candles

Blue paint dragged straight across her face, and she's still looking right at you through it. Both eyes left uncovered on purpose. A smear on the mouth, three long runs down the throat, and behind all of it a sky and clouds painted with...

Red stripes running hard across black, then breaking and changing direction partway down so the two halves push against each other. The paint is dry and dragged, the edges are ragged, and up close you can see every place the brush ran out. Optical...

You came out the other side. A field of red running all the way to the horizon, a pale track curving through it, and one dark blue blot sitting up in the sky refusing to leave. The worst is behind you and the evidence...

Her eyes are gone and she's still winning. Head tipped back, mouth open, throat exposed, and a hot pink scribble struck clean across where she'd be looking at you from. Two long runs bleed down her neck and chest. Gorgeous, arrogant, and slightly dangerous....

A big dotted head on bare white, two wide eyes, and a mouth that could be a grin or could be a scream. It's built entirely from thousands of small stamped marks, so the whole thing shivers slightly when you look at it. Childlike...

Down in the shallows where the light gets strange. Red anemones hold their ground in the seagrass, soft-bodied and unarmoured, throwing out tentacles like they own the place. The water goes blue-black above them and the shore is a long way up. Nothing here...

One black shape on warm cream, filling almost the whole canvas, and it holds a room better than anything with more going on. The edge is hand-drawn rather than perfect, swelling and pinching as it comes down. Nothing to read, nothing to decode. Just...

A garden going full tilt just before the cold takes it. Dark green closing in at the top, and underneath it everything is still blazing, scribbled flowers, a pond catching the last pink and yellow light, marks flying everywhere like the whole thing is...

Folded down to the floor, all in shadow, with a thin red edge running along the shin and the fingers like the light is only just catching him. Whatever happened, it's over, and he's still here. Enormous restraint in it, and a lot of...

One flower, three fat petals, pink against a green so deep it hums. That's it. No shading, no fuss, edges cut clean like paper. It's cheerful in a way that doesn't apologise, and the colour pairing does something slightly hallucinatory to your eyes if...

A garden that doesn't switch off at dusk. Pink heads open wide against deep blue, each one holding a scarlet coal at the centre, and the whole field seems lit from inside rather than from above. The dark at the top only makes them...

Somebody painted a face beautifully and then drew all over it. A classical portrait, head tipped back, mouth open, and across the top a crude pink scrawl with the paint still running down her chest. Vandalism and tenderness at the same time. It's the...

Something's off and it takes a second to land. A face half swallowed by wet yellow paint, two lopsided eyes and a little downturned mouth scrawled on top, and underneath it a real woman who hasn't stopped looking at you. Funny at a glance....

Blossom coming down a wall in thick handfuls, pink and cream shoved on with a knife, deep green and navy cutting through it. Then the whole thing starts running, long drips pulling colour down into a soft green and pink haze at the bottom....

Push through the dark and the whole garden is going off. Wildflowers everywhere, yellow and white and hot pink flung across deep green that's nearly black, grasses scribbled in like the place won't sit still. A pond catches a little pink light at the...

A second face drawn straight over the first, and it doesn't line up. One pink outline sits high and wide of where she actually is, with its own crude eyes and a nose running down her cheek. Underneath, the real portrait is exquisite, soft...

A black dome sitting on the bottom edge, rising almost to the top, with a thin band of cream holding it in. It reads as a hill, or a bell, or the top of something enormous coming up out of the ground. Whatever you...

Gorgeous water, and a title that makes you start looking for a body. Coral pink and mint break across deep blue, the surface busy enough to hide anything under it. Nothing has happened. Something has definitely happened. Whichever you decide, you'll keep staring at...

An oval split down the middle by a thin channel of black, so the two halves lean apart without quite separating. One side is fuller than the other. That small asymmetry is the whole painting, and it's what keeps your eye moving instead of...

A single vessel in warm cream, filling the canvas against flat black. No pattern, no glaze, no shadow. Just a shape that has been made a thousand times for a thousand years, drawn once, very slowly. There is something almost human in the way...

Nobody arranged this and it still looks arranged. Anemones packed shoulder to shoulder, coral pink against teal against a blue so deep it hums, every one of them fanned wide open and feeding. Look long enough and the flowers turn back into animals. Colour...

A cream form spreading right across black, swelling and pinching as it goes, running off all four edges. Nothing is repeated and nothing is symmetrical, yet every curve answers the one before it. Biomorphic, restless, and completely resolved. The most confident shape in the...

Flowers painted the way you'd paint them at six, if you were six and very good at it. Fat heads of magenta, crimson and coral sitting on thin stems, a whole pink field behind them, and two dark shapes shouldering in from the left...

Bare navy branches rising out of grey water into a haze of red and pink that fades to almost nothing at the top. It reads as blossom, or as the last of the light, and it never quite resolves into either. Delicate without being...