Form Provides the Structure. Surface Provides the Wonder.

Every artist eventually arrives at a question that helps clarify their practice. Sometimes it comes from a technical breakthrough. Sometimes it emerges through repetition. Sometimes it appears unexpectedly while trying to understand why certain works feel more successful than others.

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Recently, I arrived at a simple mantra that has become a useful guide for evaluating my sketchbook work:

Form provides the structure. Surface provides the wonder.

This statement emerged from reflecting on two seemingly different pieces: a botanical composition and a figurative work. At first glance they appear unrelated. One is built from flowers, leaves, seedpods, and vessels. The other centers on the human figure. Yet both are driven by the same underlying idea.

Beginning with Form

In both works, the forms are intentionally simple.

The flowers are recognizable as flowers. The leaves are recognizable as leaves. The figure is immediately readable as a figure.

I am not particularly interested in using rendering, shadows, or modeling to create volume or realism. Instead, I rely on bold black outlines and clear silhouettes to establish structure.

The form is the framework.

It creates order within the composition and gives the eye something familiar to hold onto.

In this sense, the flowers and the figure are performing the same job. They are containers.

They provide the structure necessary for everything else to happen.

Discovering the Real Subject

For a long time I viewed the patterns within my work as decorative additions. Over time, however, I realized they were doing much more than filling space.

The patterns create rhythm.

They slow the viewer down.

They encourage the eye to move from one area to another.

Most importantly, they transform a simple shape into a rich visual experience.

This realization led to an important shift in my thinking.

The flowers are not really the subject.

The figure is not really the subject.

The surface is the subject.

From Pattern to Surface

As a surface pattern designer, my instinct is naturally drawn toward repetition, ornament, and visual texture. Early work often relied on distinct pattern families: dots, stripes, florals, grids, spirals, plaids, and geometric motifs.

While I still enjoy these elements, I have become increasingly interested in broadening the idea of pattern into something more expansive.

Instead of asking:

What pattern belongs here?

I now find myself asking:

What kind of surface experience can happen here?

A surface might include:

• watercolor washes

• loose brushwork

• pattern fragments

• layered textures

• transparent marks

• repeated motifs

• overlapping decorative elements

The goal is no longer to fill a shape with a pattern. The goal is to create a surface that rewards exploration.

The Botanical Work

The botanical piece demonstrates this idea through a collection of floral and organic forms contained by strong black outlines.

Each element carries its own visual identity through a combination of washes, textures, and decorative motifs. Blue watercolor passages flow beside dots, stripes, floral marks, grids, and line work. Some areas remain nearly open and quiet, while others become visually dense.

The black background creates a dramatic field that allows the color and surface treatments to emerge with clarity.

The success of the work comes from the balance between structure and variety.

The flowers establish order.

The surfaces create discovery.

The Figure

The figure explores whether the same visual language can function outside a botanical context.

Rather than approaching the body as an anatomical study, the figure is treated as another large shape capable of containing surface activity.

The decorative motifs initially introduce associations with tattooing because viewers naturally interpret markings placed on a body as inscriptions on skin. However, the larger goal is not bodily decoration. The aim is to use the figure as a framework for exploring texture, pattern, and surface in much the same way as the flowers.

This has led to an ongoing question within the work:

How can surface move more freely across a form?

Rather than dividing the body into separate patterned regions, future explorations will focus on allowing washes, marks, and textures to overlap, dissolve, and interact across the entire figure. In doing so, the figure becomes less a collection of body parts and more a unified field of visual experience.

A Shared Visual Language

When viewed together, the botanical work and the figure reveal that the practice is not fundamentally about flowers or people.

It is about the relationship between structure and surface.

The flower provides structure.

The figure provides structure.

Both invite surface exploration.

Both become sites for ornament, texture, rhythm, color, and visual discovery.

What changes is the container.

What remains constant is the methodology.

Moving Forward

The next stage of the work involves pushing surface even further.

Not through increasingly complex pattern systems, but through richer interactions between:

• painted washes

• decorative fragments

• texture

• transparency

• overlap

• dissolution

The goal is to create surfaces that feel alive and interconnected rather than segmented or compartmentalized.

The forms will remain simple and direct.

The wonder will continue to live in the surface.

Because in the end, the principle remains the same:

Form provides the structure. Surface provides the wonder.