I began painting several years ago as a way to express my emotions on the canvas. What started as part of my healing grew into a personal style I call Emotionism — expressive artwork shaped by colour, feeling, and the inner landscape rather than literal scenes.
As a mature-age artist and Visual Arts student at university, I explore many approaches: textured pieces, layered colour work, abstract emotional paintings, and quieter narrative moments. Each piece holds a story, a mood, or a memory.
Here you’ll find a small selection of my original paintings — pieces that reflect different chapters of my life and the feelings and emotions behind them.
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This painting was created at a time when I couldn’t explain what I felt in words. “The Shape of Grief” is the moment my emotions turned into colour — fire, darkness, fragments, and the first traces of strength. It is not about a person. It is about what my heart lived through.
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This painting grew from a time when emotions felt deep and shifting. The Depths holds the movement of that inner world — the swirl of purple, blue, and shadow, and the feeling of being carried by something larger than words.
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I painted this at a time when something inside me felt as if it had cracked. It holds the moment when hidden emotions rose up and colour became the only way to let them out, and everything I felt beneath what the world could see.
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“Grief” was painted during a time when loss shaped my inner world in ways I couldn’t easily express. The acrylic painting portrays a man in a moment of stillness. The man’s face holds the weight of memory. His expression reflects the pain of absence, but also the strength it takes to carry that love forward. This piece is part of my journey of healing and finding meaning through art and reflects on what it means to love, to lose, and to live on. “Grief “ was later chosen as a finalist in the Live Well Die Well Art Prize, which meant a great deal to me because this painting holds so much of what I felt then.
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My Life is a self-portrait of the soul — a quiet gaze looking toward the story I have lived. The musical notes come from Tchaikovsky’s Sweet Dreams, a piece I loved from childhood, tender and peaceful, and a reminder that I have always been a dreamer.
The broken clock represents the people who are no longer here, the ones whose presence now lives in memory. The working clock above shows the time of my own life, though its face is hidden, because none of us know when our time will end.
The colours that move across the painting are my days — some bright, some difficult — and the gold is for the moments of happiness that shaped me. This painting holds my history, my music, my losses, and the dreams that still guide me forward.
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This watercolour painting holds a time when everything around me felt faded and far away. The colours are soft and muted, like days that carried sadness but also a strange kind of stillness. The empty signpost, the weathered fence, the pale horizon — all of it reflects how life can feel suspended after loss, waiting for meaning to return.
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There is a place between breaking and living again. A space where colour slowly returns, where something fragile remembers its strength.
Healing rarely happens all at once.
It reveals itself in small changes we almost overlook — a little more light, a little more trust in the day ahead, a sense that something inside is finding its way back.We may not feel fully healed yet,
but we recognise that we are no longer where we once were.We are standing at the edge of healing — the beginning of something not yet fully known,
but already felt.
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This mixed-media painting marks the moment I began to step back into my own life. The colours, movement, and musical rhythm reflect the return of energy, identity, and creativity after a long, dim season. It holds the feeling of becoming myself again — fully, boldly, and with colour that finally felt alive.
The next section holds the paintings I created after finding my way back to myself. The colours are stronger, the movement is freer, and the emotions come from a place of renewal rather than sorrow. These works are the beginning of a new chapter — lighter, braver, and more alive.
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This acrylic painting marks the moment when my world began to open again.
After years shaped by loss, I found myself drawn to something vast and new — colours, stars, and space unbound by the past. Beyond the Old World is the feeling of stepping into a wider sky, breathing differently, and realising that there is more ahead of me than behind me. It holds the sense of freedom that arrived when I returned to myself.
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This painting holds the moment when warmth began to move through me again.
The colours rise from cool tones into soft light, as if something inside finally opened and let love in. Light Through the Heart reflects the feeling of happiness returning — slow, real, and alive in every tone.
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This acrylic painting captures the moment when morning light meets the sea and everything feels possible again. The soft glow across the wave, the gentleness of the horizon, and the warmth of the rising sun create a sense of calm and new beginnings. After the Long Night reflects the beauty of early light and the peaceful rhythm of the water.
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This acrylic painting grew from my lifelong connection to music.
The colours, lines, and shapes move like rhythm itself, turning sound into something you can see and feel. The Shape of Sound reflects the joy, energy, and life that music has always brought into my world — a reminder that creativity has many languages
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This watercolour portrait explores identity through colour and light.
The face forms through layered washes of blue and gold, emerging with clarity and calm strength. Shades of Self reflects a moment of presence, where identity takes shape through colour, movement, and the openness of the medium.
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This watercolour portrait carries the feeling of finding strength in all the places life has touched. The colours flowing across the face show the layers we grow through — the light, the shadow, the softness, and the courage that rises from it all. The gaze holds honesty and determination, as if meeting the world without hiding. The Colour of Strength is about standing in your own presence, shaped by experience and brought to life through colour.
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This watercolour painting captures a moment when feelings sit close to the surface but remain unspoken. The colours flow into one another like shifting emotions, and the soft tears suggest a quiet honesty. It’s a face caught between hurt and strength, holding everything that hasn’t yet found words.
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Sunflowers grew through layers of colour and texture. Some marks were bold, others needed to soften. The painting changed as I listened to it, learning when to add and when to step back.
This work is not about sunflowers as flowers, but about energy — how it moves, gathers, and finally settles. The visible textures are traces of that process, left intentionally. They are not flaws, but moments of presence.
This painting was created as a birthday gift for a dear friend who was forced to leave Ukraine. For me, sunflowers have become a symbol of survival — of carrying light through loss, and continuing to grow despite the reality of war.
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This painting grew from the moment colour returned to my life.
The poppies rise as if carried by light, full of warmth, movement, and strength. Flames of the Heart reflects the feeling of coming back to myself — brighter, more alive, and ready to bloom again.
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Drawn in pencil, this piece came from a simple moment — seeing the first snowdrops and feeling that something had shifted.
They are small and delicate, yet they appear when everything is still cold, as if they trust their time will come. There is something deeply human in that.
I didn’t want to make them perfect. I wanted to hold onto that feeling — just noticing them, just being there.
Sometimes, it doesn’t take much to remind us that life is moving forward.
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At first glance, it is two boats resting on calm water. For me, it is about connection — being beside someone without needing to change, explain, or hold anything back.
A place where you can simply be, and feel the tide inside you begin to settle. Not rescue. Not possession. Not losing yourself. Just recognition.
A sense of home that exists in the space between two beings, where nothing is taken away and everything is allowed to rest.
And sometimes, that place is not a person. Sometimes, it is art.
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I was drawn to the shape first—the way it opens, as if it’s still holding something inside.
A shell is something the sea lets go of, yet it keeps its story in every curve and shadow.
To me, this piece is about what stays after everything has moved on.
Not empty… just changed, and still carrying something of what it once was.
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This drawing is about holding on.
The anchor rests below, steady and grounded, while the light comes from above. Both are present at the same time — weight and hope, depth and direction.
I worked with pencil and charcoal to build the contrast, to feel the pull between what keeps us in place and what guides us forward.
Sometimes we need both. Something that holds us… and something that reminds us where the light is.
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Drawn in pencil, this piece came from a moment when the day was slowing down and everything felt still.
A single boat moves across the water, not rushing anywhere, just carried by the rhythm of the sea. It holds that familiar feeling of being by yourself — calm, with a touch of loneliness.
Sometimes being by yourself is not about being lost.
Sometimes it is simply where you are… for a while.
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This drawing came from a place of remembrance. The hat, the flag, the poppy—each carries a weight that words often struggle to hold.
I didn’t want to create something grand. I wanted to sit with the feeling of it… the lives behind the symbols, the stories that never fully leave us.
For me, this piece is about honouring those who served, those who were lost, and those who came back changed. It is my way of saying that they are not forgotten.
I’ve also written more about what this day means to me in my Anzac Day blog post, where I share the personal side of this reflection.
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After drawing this shell, I became curious to see how it would speak through colour.
The drawing was about form and memory. The painting became about atmosphere, light, and the feeling that the shell still carries something of the ocean within it.
Perhaps we humans are not so different. We carry memories, laughter, old wounds, and moments shared with people who matter to us. Some become part of who we are.
Like the ocean within a shell.
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As we grow older, we begin to realise that the smallest moments are often the ones we truly carry with us.
This painting is about what we leave in the hearts of those we love — memories, stories, kindness, and the small pieces of ourselves that remain long after the moment has passed.
The shells become symbols of our love and of the treasures gathered through life. In the child’s hands, they become part of a new journey. The ocean in the background reminds us that life is always moving and changing, yet some connections continue beyond a single moment.
Perhaps that is what forever really looks like.
My work keeps changing as I do, so more paintings will appear here in time. But not every painting belongs on a website. Some are simply part of my own journey.
“If I could say it in words, there would be no reason to paint.” Edward Hopper