Breaking the Frame: The Challenge of Painting in the Round
For most of my practice, I’ve worked on the familiar edges of rectangles and squares. They give a natural sense of direction — a top and bottom, sides to lean against, a boundary to push colour and shape against. My Foreign Lands series grew out of that, finding rhythm in horizontal sweeps that echoed landscapes and aerial maps.
But a circle? That was something else.
When I first set up the two round canvases that have finally become Solar Echo I and Solar Echo II, I underestimated how much harder they’d be. Without corners, there’s no obvious way to ground a composition. Without vertical or horizontal edges, there’s nothing to push against. Every mark floats in a kind of planetary space. And while that’s liberating, it can also be overwhelming.
The Problem with Perfect Circles
At first, everything I tried seemed to collapse inward. My brushstrokes chased the round edge and the paintings started to look like giant targets. Too much symmetry and the energy died; too little and the paintings fell off-balance. I found myself painting, scraping back, repainting, and still not feeling the “click” that tells me a piece is alive.
Working in the round, I learned, isn’t just about changing the shape of the canvas. It changes how you think. You can’t rely on old tricks — the rules of balance, movement, and weight shift dramatically.
Breaking Through
The turning point came when I stopped fighting the format and leaned into its elemental nature. A circle isn’t a window or a landscape — it’s a world. A planet. A force field. That realisation changed everything.
I began introducing bold arcs of yellow, anchoring the compositions not as frames but as gravitational pulls. The purple fields became space, atmosphere, depth. Flecks of red and turquoise ignited the surface like eruptions or auroras.
Layer by layer, the paintings started to breathe. The harsh “egg” shapes that bothered me were softened with veils of white glaze. Colour was pulled back over the top in washes and scumbles, integrating everything until the surface felt alive again.
The Result
After weeks of reworking, scraping back, and glazing, the two paintings finally resolved. Together, they feel like a dialogue — one structured and anchored, the other fiery and molten. Seen side by side, they create a diptych that balances energy with atmosphere.
What excites me most is that these works are recognisably mine, but they’ve pushed me somewhere new. They’re not Foreign Lands. They’re not maps or landscapes. They’re elemental, planetary, echoing something deeper.
Lessons Learned
Painting in the round taught me:
Balance is everything — and much harder without corners.
Colour carries structure — yellow in particular became both anchor and force.
Persistence pays off — I nearly gave up on one of the canvases, but the struggle became part of the story written into its surface.
Breaking away from rectangles wasn’t just a technical challenge. It was a creative leap. And now that I’ve done it, I can feel new possibilities opening up.
A New Direction
The finished works — Solar Echo I and Solar Echo II — are now live on Saatchi Art. They work powerfully as a pair, creating a striking diptych, but each also holds its own as a standalone piece. In a modern interior, they bring both energy and calm — planetary echoes suspended on the wall.
[View them here on Saatchi Art ➝
Final Reflection:
Sometimes, the hardest works are the ones that reward you most. Circles demand more, but they also give more. These paintings mark a step into new territory for me, and I’m excited to see where that path leads next.
