Why Does Texture Matter More Than Image

View artwork “Anchor” on Saatchi Art

Lately, I’ve noticed that the work people pause on isn’t necessarily the most striking or the most explicit. It’s the work with surface — with layers, texture, and a sense of having been built slowly. Before there’s an image to read, there’s something to feel. For me, texture has begun to matter more than image, because it carries presence long before meaning arrives.

I’ve always been interested in surface, but recently it has moved from being part of the process to becoming the process itself. I’m less concerned with starting from a clear idea or image, and more interested in what happens when a work is allowed to build physically — layer by layer — until it begins to resolve itself. The image, if it appears at all, comes later.

Much of my work now begins with materials rather than intention: fabric, paint, abrasion, repetition. I’m drawn to surfaces that feel handled, worked, and slightly worn — not distressed for effect, but altered through time and attention. Texture becomes a quiet record of decisions made, revised, softened, or reinforced. It holds memory in a way that a clean image never quite can.

There’s something honest about surface that doesn’t announce itself. Texture doesn’t insist on being read correctly. It doesn’t demand interpretation. Instead, it offers a slower kind of engagement — one that asks the viewer to linger rather than decode. In a world saturated with images that are designed to be consumed instantly, texture resists speed. It asks for time.

I don’t see this as a rejection of image or composition, but as a rebalancing. Image still matters, but it no longer carries the whole weight of the work. When the surface is right — when the layers feel settled and the textures are doing their own quiet work — the image can afford to be restrained. It doesn’t need to explain itself.

This shift has also changed how I think about attention. I’m less interested in work that announces itself loudly and more interested in work that reveals itself gradually. The kind of work that doesn’t compete for attention, but rewards it.

Texture, for me, is not decorative. It’s structural. It’s where the work gathers its weight and presence. Before there is anything to recognise, there is something to sense. And increasingly, that feels like enough.