I’ve been opening up paints for over 25 years and what I hadn’t considered until recently is that they, in fact, have also been opening me. Testing my skill, my endurance, my ability to accept flaws: in my painting and in myself as a human.

After all this time, there is a comfort in the simple exercise of twisting off the paint cap. There’s a will, an intent to continue. Yet I still remember how unfamiliar and tentative I felt the first time I ever opened a tube of paint. I had no idea the power it would have over me. How it would cause a reaction in me. How the tube of paint once on the canvas would test me—what would I do with that Cobalt Bue? How does my colour make you feel? it would silently ask. And that