Captain Mig cutting flowers

Captain Mig Cutting Flowers was painted on the other side of a large piece of wood I rescued from the refugee camp in Calais.

When the camp was dismantled and burned, much of it disappeared overnight. Taking that piece of wood with me felt like an act of remembrance — a refusal to let everything vanish without a trace. I brought it back to my studio, carrying the weight of what I had seen and lived through there.

On one side of the wood, I painted pain, tension, and displacement. On the other side, this painting appears.

Captain Mig Cutting Flowers exists in direct conversation with what that wood has already absorbed. Painting a moment of calm, domesticity, and renewal on a surface marked by trauma was deliberate. It’s my way of saying that life doesn’t cancel suffering, but it can grow through it. That even materials shaped by hardship can hold tenderness.

This is me, at home, with Jack — a beautiful cat who shared that moment with us — at the beginning of spring. The weather is shifting, the air feels lighter, and new energy slowly returns. The flowers are small gestures of care, almost naive, but honest. They mark the arrival of a different rhythm.

For me, this painting is about transformation. About carrying stories forward without letting them harden you completely. The same wood that once stood in a place of displacement now holds an image of warmth and renewal. That contrast is the heart of this piece.

"Technique painting: Acrylic, Oil, Chalk, Oil Pastels on Canvas and spray paint on recycled wood 120cm" by 120cm"