At school, I painted flowers. Growing up in Perth, I made street art, skateboarded and got into shoes and music. I was interested in the story around things: who made them, where they came from, how a sound or a style could make you feel part of somewhere.
That interest has followed me around. I've taken thousands of photographs across more than thirty countries. I've drawn over some of them, added words to others, and filled an iPad with paintings and lettering. I've never really thought of it as being an artist. It's how I process free thoughts. I like building things.
Work took me from Perth to Sydney, London and New York. At GE, I learned how the numbers told the story of a business. At Deloitte, I learned to turn a complicated problem into something a team could work on. Back in Perth, I helped build a business from a team of two. I got to see how decisions connected: what you made, how you priced it, who you hired, what happened when something went wrong.
I enjoyed understanding how it all worked. But the creative parts of my life were getting less of my time. Painting, finding music, being properly there for people. I wanted those things back, and I wanted the work I made to have something to do with them.
A place to put a thought
The first useful change was giving my ideas somewhere to go. A thought could arrive while I was doing something else. I needed to catch it, leave it somewhere I trusted and find it again when it mattered.
Building that for myself changed how I worked. I could follow an idea without having to hold every other one in my head. It became the starting point for åsecond: a second brain connected to the way I remember, including the places where things happened.
The newer tools also let me build things I had previously only been able to describe. I could draw something, try to make it work and change it while the idea was still fresh. That made a difference. There was less distance between being interested in something and doing something with it.
The things I wanted to use
Music was an obvious place to start. I've always connected songs with places and people. Eyecüe began with the idea of pointing a camera at a moment and finding music that felt right for it.
Then there was dinner. Some nights I can't be bothered going to the shops. Süschef starts with what's on the shelf and helps find something to cook. The recipes come from real chefs, with their names on them and a way to get back to their work.
Ghostlines came from drawing: getting a design onto a wall, at the right scale, so the person painting can get on with it. Solitudes began in a notebook of incense and objects, with the places I'd lived finding their way into scent and things for the home.
Each starts with something I've felt or wanted to do. The connection becomes clearer when I look at them together. Remember something. Find music. Cook dinner. Make something with your hands. These are ordinary parts of a life, and they're worth making things for.
What the tools are for
Entrées is the studio where I bring that work together. The time spent learning how businesses work matters here, as much as the drawings and photographs do. I want to make things people enjoy using, and give them a way to keep existing.
I'm interested in what new technology can do for traditional craft and for the people who practise it. Credit the chef. Send someone to the musician. Help a person put their own drawing on a wall. A useful tool should make more room for someone's work.
I still have a job alongside the studio. I'm building it from Perth, trying things, finding out what works and going again. I want time to paint, train, see people and pay attention to what's around me. Those are the things that gave me the ideas in the first place.
Human, on purpose.
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