The Music You Gave Me

I realise that there have been quite a few long gaps between posts recently. Painting has taken a bit of a backseat whilst I’ve been involved in other things and projects. One of these was designing the album cover for my sister’s latest studio album.

This is my sister’s (‘Callaghan’) 8th studio album and it is a collection of songs dedicated to our late father, John, who died very suddenly of lung cancer in 2023. The songs explore the emotions of loss and grief but are also a celebration of life filled with music. Our dad was a great musician himself - mainly classical guitar - and music always played a big part in our childhood.

It felt lovely to play a small part in the album process, given it was such a personal album. The background image of the album is taken from a woodblock print that I made a few years ago and it is digitally mixed in with sound waves of the song my sister wrote for our dad shortly before he died, which is also the title of the album.

Dealing with illness and grief puts everything into perspective but I also found that it made me want to take a break from painting and try out other things. But all of them are having interesting subtle influences on my work and I’m excited to get back into the studio on a more regular basis now and to start making new work.