This double portrait of my son and partner began with a simple observational line drawing. Having painted them both many times, I also drew on memory and earlier works to inform the direction of the painting, allowing the knowledge that comes from familiarity and sustained observation to remain part of the process.

Painting family activates a particular kind of looking. Observation is entangled with intimacy, memory and shared experience. My gaze as painter moves between what is present before me and what has accumulated through years of togetherness and close attention. The portrait becomes a threshold between the immediacy of a captured moment and this longer history of looking.

Likeness emerges through this movement between present observation and accumulated familiarity. The painting holds a moment within a longer duration: a history of seeing, changing and being alongside one another over time.