Within Breathing Distance

You came so close I felt your breath against my face. your perspective is different your eyes are oddly large and your mussel falls away.

I don't think I moved. I don't think I even remembered to breathe.

I had spent so many years searching for intimate encounters with wild creatures, yet nothing prepared me for the moment you chose to cross those final inches.

I remember the astonishing detail of your eyes. The little changes in your expression. Your complete indifference to the importance of what was happening to me.

Did you know I would carry this moment for the rest of my life?

FIELD STUDIES | ORIGINAL WORKS ON PAPER

Created in the wild. Completed in Studio 440.

I travel into the field with a small bag of simple tools. A stick of charcoal, a little paint, a brush, pencils and paper. Nothing elaborate. The rest belongs to the moment.

Hours spent waiting in remote landscapes give way to an instinctive process of observation and expression. Lines follow movement, charcoal captures fleeting shadows, and loose, unfinished marks become a visual memory of an encounter.

These original studies begin in the field, often during the quiet hours between wildlife encounters. Back at Studio 440, I transfer the drawings onto fine art cotton paper, building on the original impressions with layers of charcoal, ink, pencil and paint.

Some lines remain raw and restless. Others dissolve into the paper. I deliberately leave areas unfinished, allowing the intimacy of the encounter to exist alongside the freedom of the original sketch.

Each piece is a one-of-a-kind original, a deeply personal record of time spent within breathing distance of the wild.

From a fleeting encounter to a lasting impression.

The close framing leaves little room for the eye to wander. In black and white, the face becomes a meeting of texture, light and remarkable symmetry, with small differences that make it unmistakably individual. The eyes hold the image together. I return to them each time, remembering the feeling of being fully attentive, with nothing to add and nowhere else I wanted to be. For a moment, looking was enough.

I came to watch wolves. I hadn’t understood how it would feel to be watched in return. There is a particular stillness that comes over you when a wild animal looks directly towards you. The mind, so busy through all those hours of waiting, suddenly has very little to say. You are aware of your own presence, of being a visitor, of the living creature on the other side of the lens.