Case 018

The Colour Beneath

It started early. I was just a kid, but already the walls were talking. That over-bed storage unit—red and black—wasn’t just furniture. It was a signal. A declaration. I didn’t know it then, but I was laying down my first mark. The first time I made a space mine.

From there, the trail winds through student flats and shared houses. Dark green bedrooms. Cream walls sliced with fawn and pale blue stripes that ducked and weaved around doorframes like they had somewhere better to be. It wasn’t decoration—it was control. A way to bend the world into something beautiful. Colour was the weapon. I used it freely.

Then came East Barnet. Then France. A four-hundred-year-old stone house that didn’t know what hit it. A deep red kitchen. A toilet with a white floor that made no sense but refused to apologise. Ceramic tiles snaking like they had secrets. A hare-shaped lamp throwing shadows that didn’t behave. It was chaos. It was perfect.

The Current Scene

Now I’m here. Honiton. The latest chapter. This one saw five years of tearing things apart and putting them back together. Floors lifted. Walls destroyed. Ceilings stitched up. Electrics rewired. Furniture built from scratch or dragged back from the brink. Every surface painted. Every corner claimed. It wasn’t a hobby—it was survival. I needed a place I could live in. So I made one.

And here’s the twist: all of that—the dust, the sweat, the colour—it came easy. But the art? The art’s harder. It asks questions I don’t always want to answer. It waits. It judges. It doesn’t always give back.

But maybe I’ve been looking at it wrong. Maybe I need to treat it like the interiors. No ceremony. No hesitation. Just do it. Because it needs doing. Because the walls are bare and the silence is loud.

Not standing still

This isn’t about paint. It’s about instinct. About making something because the alternative is standing still. And I don’t do still. Not anymore.