A Mind Filled With Paintings And A Touch Of Philosophy

Immersion

My creative life is pretty straightforward. I like immersing myself in a topic. Research, tracking, learning - basically doing deep dives, sometimes to an obsessive degree. Hearing Stephen Fry talk about a Velázquez painting he admires, "Pope Innocent X", is the kind of thing that genuinely excites me. I love people that have deep knowledge. Knowing that someone else knows more about a specific topic than I do is incredibly exciting. 

I have friends obsessed with early German philosophers, another who can talk about medieval tapestry for hours, and someone who did an extra Harvard semester on Chinese philosophy. Do I understand all of it? Maybe not. But going beyond the surface feels like a counter-move towards advertising, where everything is often skimmed or simplified.

That instinct pulls me into  places like Cassius & Co in London - an art and rare books gallery that doesn’t follow the mainstream - or to Fallingwater in Pennsylvania, Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural masterpiece commissioned by the Kaufmann family, who also supported commercial artists like Paul Rand. Even in my day-to-day work, immersion is how I operate: fast, intentional, and always driven by the desire to get past the obvious.

Art

Art is where this instinct comes alive most clearly. I love emerging artists, art fairs, editions, the excitement of tracking and discovering new work. Art Basel in Basel was the highlight of my year; it is an unbeatable concentration of established greats and the next generation in one place. Right now, I’m deep into Stanley Whitney’s Italian paintings and drawings, Rembrandt’s etchings across his lifetime, and the intensity of Georg Baselitz’s yellow head sculptures.

I used to specialise in identifying emerging talent like Lenz Geerk and Christopher Culver, artists who are now firmly established, and I still follow that path. If a painting can make you feel something, that is the highest possible achievement.

Collecting, Connecting, Learning

Alongside art, I keep a constant archive of things that catch my attention: books, catalogues, obscure design references, even old club flyers, especially by 75B and peers of that era. It’s not collecting for the sake of collecting; it’s about understanding why something works, why it feels new, or why it resonates. That habit started early and has stayed with me. It built a way of thinking where ideas come from noticing small details that most people skip over.

My process is this: immerse, learn quickly, connect things that don’t obviously belong together, and strip away anything unnecessary. I like reading patterns in visual culture - shifts in colour, proportion, texture, the way certain motifs appear without anyone planning them. Those clues often tell you where things are heading long before the industry catches up.

I’ve learned that creativity only works when you stay involved in the world rather than watching it from a distance. That’s true for me, and it’s true for Iris. Participation is everything; the alternative isn’t very meaningful.