People ask me about process constantly. The honest answer is that no two pieces move through it the same way. Some arrive almost complete. Others are excavations. But there are constants. A way of beginning. A way of listening to what the work wants to become. A way of knowing when it's finished.
It Starts with a Question, Not an Image
The first thing that exists is never a visual. It's a question. Or more precisely, a tension — something that doesn't resolve cleanly in language, that keeps returning, that seems to be asking to be made visible rather than explained.
The concept isn't the idea. The concept is the specific form the idea takes when it decides it wants to exist as a visual object.
The Tools, In Order
I work primarily on iPhone and MacBook Pro. The mobility matters. Photoshop Mobile and Photoleap are the primary instruments. The archive — roughly 140,000 works at this point — is the raw material. I work in layers, literally and conceptually.
When the Work Pushes Back
Every piece reaches a point where it starts telling me what it needs rather than following my plan for it. This is the moment I most value and most dread. The abandoned thing is almost always something that looked good in isolation but was wrong for the work.
Knowing When It's Done
There's no checklist. There's only the moment when the image stops asking anything of me — when it becomes self-sufficient. I usually know it's done when I look at it and feel something that isn't pride. Pride is the response to execution. What the finished work produces is something quieter: a kind of recognition. Yes. That's the thing I was trying to find.