SK5 (School of Michelangelo)
SK5 (School of Michelangelo)
(2022), Oil on Canvas, 100x120 cm
This painting began with a collision between two worlds: the housing estates and backstreets I grew up aroun the monumental bodies of the Italian Renaissance. The figure draws heavily from the Belvedere Torso, a fragment that became foundational to Michelangelo’s understanding of the body as something unfinished, unstable, and alive through tension rather than perfection.
At the same time, the landscape emerges from photographs taken around my old street in SK5. Streetlights, brick, shadows, and suburban thresholds are pulled into dialogue with Renaissance form, collapsing distinctions between the sacred and the ordinary, the historical and the personal.
The work marked the beginning of my deeper engagement with Renaissance painting and sculpture, not as nostalgia or imitation, but as a living visual language capable of carrying contemporary experience. Here, the idealised body of classical tradition is relocated into post-industrial Britain, becoming a site where memory, class, desire, and transformation intersect.
My paintings are created using artist-grade, high pigment oil paints on carefully prepared cotton or linen canvas, chosen for their durability, surface quality, and ability to hold subtle layers of colour over time. Each canvas is triple-primed to create a stable, archival surface that allows for both precision and luminosity within the paint.
The works are built slowly through layered glazing techniques inspired by Renaissance painting methods. Thin translucent layers of oil colour are applied over time to create depth, atmosphere, and shifts in light that cannot be achieved through direct painting alone. This process allows light to travel through the paint surface and reflect back outward, giving the work its characteristic glow and sense of inner luminosity.
I use a combination of controlled modelling, sfumato, and transparent colour layering to create delicate tonal transitions, rich shadows, and heightened colour vibration while retaining clarity of form and detail. The final surface is carefully varnished once fully cured, enriching colour depth, unifying the finish, and providing long-term protection for the painting.
Every material choice is made with permanence, visual depth, and collector longevity in mind, allowing the paintings to function not only as images, but as crafted objects designed to endure across time.