Flow, is one of my most joyous creations and, at the time, one of the first large colour field paintings I ever created. It was some 20 years ago now. I still remember painting this outside on the grass at the farm, en plein air. My grandmother and later my father lived on the property before he passed. My grandmother bred horses for a living, and I recall around six of them standing around the painting as I washed fields of colour. It was a magical time, a memory I still hold in my heart. I reached out to my friend and muse, Max Gimblett, for some wisdom when embarking on this new fluid style. Max is a Zen Buddhist Monk and fellow artist, and one of the only New Zealand artists to have exhibited at the Guggenheim in New York. I asked him, “How do you know when you’re finished?”

“Don’t overwork it,” he said, “The painting will tell you. You’ll feel it in your heart.”

This painting is a meditation on transition, presence, and emotional alchemy.

Working with fluid washes of golden yellow, lavender blue, and burnt orange, I invited the pigments to flow with their own intelligence, guided more by feeling than form. Each layer reveals what came before it, just as our inner landscapes hold traces of past emotions, dreams, and awakenings. The drips and bleeds are not mistakes; they are messengers of movement, surrender, and transformation.

The top field of golden light evokes clarity, hope, and the illumination that comes from choosing joy—even in uncertainty. The cooler band of blue represents the reflective space of stillness, intuition, and the soul’s quiet voice. The deep orange base anchors the work, reminding us of the strength we find when we root ourselves in truth, passion, and creative fire.

This piece was created in a liminal space—between letting go and becoming. It is a prayer for those standing at the edge of change, choosing not fear, but light.