I begin with play and observation: objects collected, dioramas built in the studio, drawings made from life. A narrative starts to form and I let it. Then I push it away.
Looking is its own kind of taming. The moment you really look at something wild, you start shaping it into what you need it to be. A child does it first, without knowing; I do it again, knowingly, through paint. A resolved painting doesn't end the taming. It just marks where I stopped.
I want the painting to develop beyond where I started, to go somewhere I couldn't have planned. Each layer is a decision made, then reconsidered, then followed wherever it leads. Composition, colour, tone, edge, all of it settles first, before I decide how much of the narrative I let back in. Paint is the only material that lets me stay this unresolved for this long, that will hold a decision and still let me change it.
I work semi-abstractly because it holds open the space between the painting and the person looking at it. The animal emerges, or is half-hidden, or is felt before it is found. I am interested in that edge, where recognition and sensation meet.
A painting is finished when it holds that balance, specific enough to be felt, and open enough to be completed by someone else.
That balance doesn't sit the same way in every painting. In some, it's play, the animal left half-seen so there's room for someone else to bring their own imagination in. In others, it's the animal holding an environment it shares with me. In others, it's still being worked out, how much of what I want the animal to be, against how much stays wild regardless.
Eleanor Wong, 2026
