Ukiyo-e & Sumi-e
Cats and ink were made for each other — all attitude and motion, caught in a handful of honest strokes or not at all. You load the brush, hold your nerve, and let it go in one breath.
How it began
One breath, one stroke
This collection started with my black and white work. I’d been stripping the landscapes back further and further — fewer marks, more air — and somewhere down that road you run into the masters who got there centuries first. Ukiyo-e and Sumi-e stopped me cold: whole worlds in a handful of strokes, nothing left you could take away. So I did what I always do — cleared the bench, bought the wrong brushes, and made a lot of bad ink paintings until they started being honest ones.
The piece on the easel here is the one that changed it. The studio cat had curled herself around her red ball and I had maybe ten seconds before she moved — one loaded brush, one breath, no corrections. When I stepped back, she was all there: the weight, the warmth, the attitude. That first painting has never left the studio, but every cat in this collection is descended from it.
The craft
How I work
There’s a faster way to do all of this, but where I am from you can always tell when someone takes pride in their job. I’d rather make fewer things properly than a thousand things nearly.
01
It starts with my hands
Every piece begins as a real painting in my Sheffield studio — brush, ink, mistakes and all. If it didn’t start by hand, it wouldn’t be mine to sign.
02
Made when you order
I don’t keep a pile of prints in a warehouse. Yours is made when you ask for it — fine-art giclée on thick 310gsm cotton rag, with inks that will outlast the both of us.
03
Framed properly, here
Hand-framed in Britain by people who care about the job as much as I do. It takes a few days longer — I’d rather keep your wall waiting than let it down.
A day here is simple. Coffee first — nothing happens before that — then I open the blinds and look at yesterday’s work in the morning light, the most honest critic I know. The good hours are the quiet ones, radio on low, before the phone remembers I exist. And whatever kind of day it’s been, I clean every brush before I leave — partly respect for the tools, mostly because tomorrow’s work deserves a clean start.
