Silence, water, and mineral pigments.

I started the studio because I wanted my days, and the rooms my paintings end up in, to have a little more quiet in them. A painting cannot be rushed. That is the whole point of it.

Every painting begins in morning light, with water, mineral pigment and the rough tooth of heavy cotton paper. There are no shortcuts and no prints. What you hang on your wall is the sheet I painted on.

I paint freehand, with a compass and a pencil for the geometry and nothing else. Every ring of a mandala follows the rhythm of my breath. The process is a kind of meditation: wet the cotton, watch the pigment bloom, wait for it to dry, add the next glaze.

Watercolor forgives no haste and allows no erasing. It asks you to be fully present, and to be honest with the water.

The hand leaves small irregularities that make every painting unrepeatable. Look closely at the paper and you can see the hours of patient, translucent layers.

Mineral pigments behave differently from synthetic inks. Cobalt, raw sienna and natural ochre are heavy, and as the water dries they settle into the tiny valleys of the cotton paper. Painters call this granulation. It gives the surface a soft, velvety texture and gentle transitions that a print simply cannot reproduce.

I use artist-grade watercolors rated ASTM I for lightfastness, so the blues, terracottas and soft lavenders stay as they are for generations.

A mandala is an old symbol of wholeness. In a room it works as a visual anchor: the eye rests at the centre and the mind slows down with it. The geometry gives the painting structure, the watercolor keeps it soft.

The last rings get gold paint, applied by brush. The gold changes with the light: bright in the morning, warm and quiet in the evening, as the sun moves across your room.