Jupigio-Artwork-Gallery
Rare - Unusual - Unforgettable
Creative Galleries - coming soon
Where the Story Begins Before the Artwork Is Finished
Not every artwork I create needs its own Creative Gallery.
Some works tell their story perfectly well through the finished image and its accompanying journal. Others are different.
They evolve over months, sometimes years. They begin with research, sketches and questions, then change as I work. Ideas are abandoned. New ones appear. Symbols develop. Problems have to be solved. Sometimes the finished artwork bears only a passing resemblance to what I originally imagined.
These are the works you will find here.
The Creative Galleries take you behind selected paintings and sculptures to follow their development layer by layer and stage by stage.
You will see the early drawings and first ideas, the construction or underpainting, the decisions I made along the way and, importantly, the moments when I changed my mind.
Because for me, creating a complex artwork isn't simply a matter of deciding what I want to say and then making it.
The thinking continues while I work.
A question can lead to another question. A symbol in one corner can alter the meaning of something elsewhere. Research can send me in an unexpected direction. Personal experience can suddenly find its way into the work. Sometimes I stand back and realise that something I have spent hours creating is simply wrong—and out it comes.
That process is normally invisible once you see the finished piece.
Here, it isn't.
Watch the Story Being Built
For the paintings, you can follow the image as the layers accumulate and the narrative begins to emerge.
For the sculptures, you can follow something very different: the research, engineering, materials, construction, experimentation and painstaking detail required to turn an idea into a physical object.
These galleries aren't simply photographs of works in progress.
They are a record of thought in progress.
They show where an artwork started, what happened to it along the way and how both the work—and sometimes my understanding of its subject—changed before it was finished.
The accompanying Journals explore what the completed artworks ultimately mean.
The Creative Galleries show you how I got there.
So choose an artwork and start at the beginning.
Let's take the finished work apart and discover how its story was built.
Before the Work Begins
For me, the creative process often starts long before the first sketch.
I have questioned human behaviour for as long as I can remember.
Even as a teenager, I wasn't particularly interested in simply drawing what I could see. I remember creating a piece at around fourteen with the Earth at its centre, surrounded by chess pieces, nuclear weapons and symbols of power.
Looking back, I can see that I was already asking the same kinds of questions that still drive my work now.
Why do people behave as they do?
Why do we know something may be wrong and still find a way to justify it?
Why are some people expected to forgive endlessly while others seem able to repeat the same behaviour without consequence?
Who decides what is good?
Who decides what is bad?
And how much grey exists between the two?
As I grew older, those questions stopped being abstract.
They began appearing in workplaces, relationships, families, politics and the structures of everyday life.
I watched people work hard while others became very skilled at allowing somebody else to carry their burden.
I saw envy become gossip and resentment.
I saw generosity exploited.
I saw forgiveness mistaken for permission.
I saw power performed rather than earned.
And I made mistakes of my own.
That matters.
I am not standing outside my work pointing at everybody else.
I have got things wrong.
I have behaved badly.
I have made decisions I would make differently now.
What matters to me is what happens next.
Do I recognise it?
Do I own it?
Do I try to repair what I damaged?
Do I learn?
That question of accountability runs through much of my work.
So when I begin a complex painting or sculpture, I am rarely starting with a tidy answer.
I am starting with experience.
Observation.
Frustration.
Memory.
Research.
Questions.
And sometimes contradictions I haven't yet resolved.
The artwork becomes the place where I work through them.
I have often described creating as a kind of therapy.
I question the subject.
I question the world around it.
And very often, I end up questioning myself.
I feel it. I breathe it. I live it.
Then somewhere between the first sketch and the final layer, the work begins to answer back.
The accompanying Journals explore what the completed artworks ultimately mean.
The Creative Galleries show you how I got there.
So choose an artwork and start at the beginning.
Let's take the finished work apart and discover how its story was built.