It all began with play.
It was a hot summer’s day on 19 February 2025. Decked out in a black cashmere top and a pair of black linen pants, I sat cross-legged in the middle of my studio, surrounded by art books. I owned (and still own) only a modest collection, and my favourite ones were strewn all over the shaggy black-and-cream Beni Ourain rug. These included Richard Serra Drawing by Yale University Press, the monograph Agnes Martin by Distributed Art Publishers, Sol LeWitt: Between the Lines by Koenig Books, and Gego: The Architecture of an Artist by Spector Books. I’d spent the summer break poring over the books in my downtime, and, seeing as my five sons had gone back at school, I was keen to channel all the inspiration into some form of action and creation.
In my calendar that day, I’d blocked out four hours for ‘art work’. But, truth be told, I had no idea what kind of art I would be working on.
My starting point was to rummage through the large box of sketches and drawings I’d accumulated over the previous couple of years. It was a lovely mixed bag—box?—of stuff. There were miniature sketches and large sketches, there were studies in graphite and studies in oil stick, and there were drawings on random bits of butcher’s paper and drawings on cartridge paper torn out of sketchbooks.
Amongst this assortment of conceptual paper works were countless sketches for my previous body of work, Duality of Negative Space. I spread them out on the rug around me and spent an hour or more gazing upon them. As I contemplated all the studies I never translated into actual works, I wrestled with the part of me that wanted to explore and pursue all those possibilities. I was still deeply captivated by the variety of irregular shapes I’d conjured up—I couldn’t deny the attraction—but, in the end, I sensed it was also time to experiment with something a little different. In other words, it was time to move on.
That’s when my beloved art books came out. (To play, one might say.)
The book on Gego—Gertrud Goldschmidt—held my attention for a long time that morning. I found her lines mesmerising.
My own journey with art had begun with lines back in 2018 when I re-interpreted traditional Chinese characters into one-line paintings. At first, I painted these solely in sumi ink on Khadi paper. But, eventually, I started mixing my own gouache paint, and I ended up with paintings in an autumnal rust colour that resonated strongly with me at the time because of a particular shell that I found on the shores of a town called Gerroa, along the south coast of New South Wales. The resulting collection of paintings was titled Human Instinct, and the signature pieces were To Love, To Be, and To Have. The collection was well received, and, to my pleasant surprise, I sold quite a number of those artworks.
Whilst the lines I painted for Human Instinct were pre-planned and precise, I was ready to embrace something more chaotic and more organic that Wednesday in the studio when I sat on the rug and admired the collective genius of Gego, Martin, Serra, and LeWitt.
Like I said, I was smitten with Gego’s lines—their fluidity and their movement—and I wanted to play with something similar. I picked up the book on LeWitt and stumbled, once again, upon Wall Drawing #123A: The first drafter draws a not so straight vertical line as long as possible. The second drafter draws a line next to the first one, trying to copy it. The third drafter does the same, as do as many drafters as possible. Then the first drafter, followed by the others, copies the last line drawn until both ends of the wall are reached, 1991.
This gave me what I needed to start playing.
I located an A3 sheet of Khadi paper, and, using a metal ruler, I tore it in half, then halved the two smaller pieces again, and so on and so forth until I had sixteen pieces of paper roughly A7 in size.
And then, with an Artline pen, I began to draw.
I drew lines. A multitude of lines. I drew them freely and happily, somewhat aimlessly, and, yet, paradoxically, with a great sense of purpose. The one constraint I placed on this line play was that none of the lines could overlap. But, apart from that, I let my hand—and my imagination—run free.
By the time my sons trudged home from school that afternoon, I had created about eight miniature studies on the Khadi paper.
Seven days later, when I had another six hours for ‘art work’, I kept drawing, and I finished another eight studies.
At exactly 2.59 pm that afternoon, on 26 February 2025, I lay out the sixteen studies on the low bench in my studio and then stepped back to contemplate what I had created.
In that instant, my next collection took on form and substance in my mind’s eye. In that moment, I knew what I needed to do.
The week after, I dug out an unused pack of 300 gsm Arches cold-pressed cotton paper and got to work. By the end of that day, I had created the first two artworks for my new collection, The Journey Matters.

In 2013, my friend Trish—a professional photographer—and I started a business together. Our core offering was an all-day memory-keeping workshop, where we taught our students how to photograph their families, how to organise their images in Lightroom, how to use Adobe InDesign, and how to create custom photo books and other tangible keepsakes as a way of documenting family life.
One of the mantras we repeated to our students was that ‘the journey matters’. That life is not about where we want to end up, but about all the moments, days, weeks, and seasons along the way. And, as such, we should all respect the journey, and we should all figure out how to document it and preserve it in a way that makes sense to us individually. ‘Every story counts’ is what we used to say, over and over again.
I still believe all this to be true.
The essence of life is not defined by the destination. Instead, the essence of life is defined by the life we live each day.
Also: our lives and our journeys will never be linear or precise or the way we determine them to be, because we are flawed and imperfect beings, and we are not the ones in control.
In the same vein, none of us can avoid suffering, because suffering is part of being human. Society may want to sell us the lie that we can live perfect and happy lives if we pay money for this or that, but the reality is that some days are good, and some days are hard. (And some harder than others.) There will be joy, and there will be grief. No one can avoid this—it is a truth that binds all mankind.
In the end, nobody knows where their journey will take them. And nobody knows how or when their journey will wrap up.
The best we can do is to embrace our own journey and to live each day with grace, with kindness, with love, and with acceptance.
In fact, how we live each day is the only part of our journey that we can control.

In almost every area of life, I am inclined towards perfectionism. This is not necessarily a character trait to be touted, but it is what it is, and I am who I am.
As a graphic designer, however, precision is essential, and perfectionism is a strength. If the spacing is out by a pixel, or if the margins of a layout are out by half a millimetre, you can rest assured that I’ll spot it. (And fix it.)
It is therefore poetic—and also amusing and perhaps ironic—that I’ve built an entire body of work on the premise of imperfection and surrendering control. This, however, is precisely what draws me to this body of work. From a personal perspective, it’s why I need to make it. From an artistic standpoint, it’s also why I believe this body of work carries both weight and importance.
Whatever I may tell myself in life, I am not in control. The creator alone is in control.
Thus, owing to the freehand nature of my line work, each piece of work in The Journey Matters is literally a leap of faith—each line, each breath, each stroke, and each pause.
Until I draw it, each line is unknown to me.
There is no certainty in the process.
With each line that I draw, all I can do is exhale and surrender myself to the process—a process that involves faltering, hesitation, and nuances. There is virtually zero control on my part, and any perception of control is purely an illusion.
This is symbolic of life itself.
To the best of our ability, we trust, we surrender, we exhale, we accept.
Yes, often we may cry out against this—in the same way that my entire being cries out against the uncertainty of each line—but, in the end, we must surrender to a force infinitely greater than our own.

In The Journey Matters, each line is its own journey—representing a moment, a minute, an hour, a day, a week, a month, a year.
On its own, each line may seem unimpressive and insignificant. But, upon stepping back and zooming out, it becomes clear that the lines create a story. In fact, without the lines, there is no story.
It is the same with our lives.
Each day, on its own, may feel basic, mundane, or perhaps even trivial, but, when we look back and perceive the sum of our days, we inevitably discover that it’s those small ‘intervals’—the moments, the hours, the weeks, the months, and the years—that write the story of our lives.
Early in the piece, I knew I would be dedicating this body of work to my son Cameron, who would’ve turned eighteen on 16 September 2025. I also decided that, in honour of his eighteenth birthday, I would create 180 artworks as part of the collection.
So far, I’ve completed 120 of the 180. This is a significant milestone for me, as this is the largest body of work I have created to date as an artist. In this way, and in many others, my son continues to shape who I am and the journey that I am on, even though he is no longer here.
Each artwork in the collection is dated the day it was made, and the artworks are titled according to the order in which they were created. Thus, if a viewer browses the body of work from start to finish, they will actually experience the artist’s journey from beginning to end.
Ultimately, The Journey Matters reminds us of a universal truth about humanity: we are all on a journey, and we are all imperfect.
But, even so, all of our journeys are of value. All of our journeys are worthy.
Your journey matters. My journey matters.
Every journey matters.