Elm & the Raven Oil Paintings | Surreal & Emotional Dreamscapes

As much as I love being out in wild places with my camera — wind on my skin, dirt under my boots — much of my photo editing is done at a desk, often in darkness.  It’s careful, focused, detailed work. That’s why painting offers me something utterly different. It feels like freedom.

Oil has always been my favourite medium. I love the richness, the slow drying time, the way colours merge into one another in hypnotic gradients. It changes how I think, how I breathe. There’s a physicality to painting that photography doesn’t ask of me — it invites me to move differently, to trust my body and intuition. To lose control a little, and be okay with what emerges.

These paintings are part of that shift — part of learning to let go of the lens and step directly into the scene, into imagination, into symbolism. They don’t depict real places, but inner ones. Dreamlike, fragments, thoughts, mythologies. There’s no strict realism here — instead, I use rich colour, movement, and pattern to convey something emotional, personal, and poetic.

I’m interested in how movement and stillness live together — in a composition, in a mind. That’s something I try to bring into these pieces. You’ll often see flowing lines, branching forms, and repeated patterns in my work. These are more than decorative motifs — they’re part of a personal visual language that echoes my ideas around thought, connection, and energy. They represent the things we can’t always name but know to be there: memory, grief, desire, intuition, the subconscious. The undercurrent of being.

Colour plays a key role in this work. I lean into saturation, contrast, and vibrancy not just for aesthetic pleasure, but to evoke emotion. These choices aren’t always conscious at the time, but they come from somewhere instinctual. And that’s part of what I love about painting: it allows me to respond from the gut, not just the mind.

I don’t start with a rigid plan — the work often leads me — but I think visually, in layers, and in symbols. My experience with image-making shows up in how these paintings are constructed: there’s intention, even in the looseness.

Ultimately, I paint to explore what can’t be said with words — or even captured with a camera. These works are about interior landscapes: the wildness inside us, the stories we carry, the things we long to return to. I don’t seek perfection in paint. I seek resonance. Feeling. Mystery. A sense that something bigger or older is speaking through the marks.

These oil paintings are part of an evolving practice — a return to play, to intuition, to the physical joy of making. They’re imperfect, but deeply felt. More than anything, they’re invitations: to look inward, to drift into story, and to see what you find there.

Painted with quality professiona grade Australian Oil Paints. Prints may be available. Enquire directly with the artist.