Reduction vs. Complexity — The Intrigue of Opposites
I’m a musician and an artist, although I can’t pack my creativity into discrete segments — it’s all part of the same spectrum. Everything I create comes from a single impulse, expressed across different mediums. Only recently have I started to see how deeply connected it all is.
Musically, I began in classical before moving to modern styles like rock and metal. At music college, I broadened my palette — learning jazz, funk, and fusion — and became fascinated with complex harmony and rhythmic interplay. These weren’t just exercises in technique; they gave me new colours to write with.
I later discovered that my mind naturally maps sound to colour — a form of synaesthesia. Certain chords feel like textures, timbres carry weight or brightness, and harmony holds colour. I explored this further on my podcast Hearing in Colour, interviewing others with similar cross-sensory experiences. These connections began to shape how I understood structure and emotion — not just in music, but in everything.
When I formed my band Indighost, we described ourselves as “Megadeth meets Sting.” That tension between complexity and accessibility — visceral and cerebral — became central to my work. I carried that philosophy into my solo instrumental album Space Alchemy, which spanned genres while maintaining a unified voice.
That same duality — tension and release, complexity and clarity — now defines my visual work even more clearly.
ToonTangled: Controlled Chaos
ToonTangled began with hand-drawn pieces while I was at music college. The idea was simple: begin in the centre and expand outward using tessellation — improvising in pen form. Each shape evolves from the last.
The early works are dense and chaotic — improvised, layered, and strange. They create a sensory overload. But like complex music, they reward deeper attention. First you see the energy. Then structure. Then recurring motifs and subtle relationships.
These pieces do not leave space. That is deliberate.
Essence: Precision in Restraint
In sharp contrast is my Essence series — minimalist animal portraits created with one or two lines and restrained shading.
This raised a question: how much can be removed while preserving identity? Could I sketch not a gorilla, but “gorilla” as a distilled concept?
These digital pieces balance motion, abstraction, and intention. One misplaced line and the identity disappears.
A Shared Impulse
Though they appear opposite, Essence and ToonTangled emerge from the same source: the desire to express form, tension, and intent. One builds upward; the other strips away.
ToonTangled is the complex solo — improvised, dense, layered.
Essence is the held note over silence — restrained, deliberate, final.
White space carries weight. Silence lands with force. Minimal and maximal are not contradictions, but complements.