What Remains, Remains Unfinished is a series of large-scale oil paintings (3'x4') is rooted in repetition, ritual, and return. Each work begins with the same singular image, but through ongoing reworking and obsessive engagement, it is repeatedly transformed. The image becomes a site of both fixation and freedom — a loop of destruction and renewal, attention and release.

The source image was taken during a solo hike on Salt Spring Island. As I walked along the shoreline, a seal followed me in the water, surfacing and disappearing like a shadow. The forest floor was carpeted in pink and orange ferns, tangled with stark white lichen — like a breathing tapestry of decay and regeneration. It felt like a quiet, almost private wilderness. The image has since become both anchor and portal: stripped from its original context, then re-entered again and again through paint.

The large-scale paintings emerged in 2023 during a period of considerable change. With the closure of a long-standing studio, the end of a major arts education initiative I had been part of, and the moving past of a long-term primary relationship, familiar creative structures and personal foundations were no longer in place. In response, the act of painting became both a stabilizing force and a way forward.

Without access to a formal studio, I adapted my living space into a working environment — the kitchen floor became the primary site of production. This shift prompted a more physical, grounded approach to making, where process and daily life were closely intertwined. The paintings developed through repeated engagement with a singular image: a shoreline marked by vivid ferns, lichen, and the quiet presence of a seal. This motif served as a generative anchor — a space for reflection, reconstruction, and sustained inquiry.

The work is marked by this kind of obsessive return. I paint the same image again and again, not in search of resolution, but to see what changes — in the material, in myself. The repetition is not mechanical. It is questioning. I’m interested in obsession: Can we choose it? Can we provoke it? How does one cultivate a fixation, and where does it begin to shape us in return?

Each painting carries the imprint of a different emotional state — grief, clarity, defiance, tenderness. Some gestures are forceful; others fall away. Nothing is ever fully resolved. Earlier layers remain partially exposed — echoing what came before.

I intend to continue this work indefinitely. The scale demands full bodily engagement. It asks me to return — not to achieve mastery, but to live inside the act of returning itself.

What Remains, Remains Unfinished is a devotion to that loop — to the unfinished, the obsessive, the becoming. A way of asking the same question over and over, and finding a different answer each time.