The Tender Light paintings have their origins in research for a 2023 commission for the Edinburgh Children’s Hospital, offering me an opportunity to return to one of my earliest aesthetic influences; a childhood fascination with the work of Danish illustrator Kay Nielsen.
These works unfold as imagined, dreamlike landscapes, imbued with a quiet stillness and layered with delicate ornamentation. They invite a slower, more attentive way of looking. Rather than conveying a fixed narrative, they evoke a mood or atmosphere, leaving space for personal reflection, perhaps echoing my own childhood impulse to disappear into Nielsen’s imagined worlds.
Colour is approached intuitively. Soft, muted tones suggest calm and restoration, while richer hues and unexpected combinations introduce a sense of wonder and enchantment. In this way, colour becomes a means of shaping emotional and psychological space, guiding how the paintings are experienced as much as how they are seen