The genesis of my ideas rarely arrives fully formed or out of thin air. Instead, I believe they fragment deep in the subconscious, then surface gradually. They are then amplified and reshaped during seemingly mundane moments like cycling or running. It’s in those quiet spaces, where memories, experiences, and past journeys echo and overlap, that the seeds of today’s work begin to take shape.

This portrait is of Simon, a Malawian man I met at the summit of Mount Mulanje in Malawi.

The image is deliberately pixelated, reflecting both presence and distortion; a reminder of how memory and identity are reconstructed over time.

In 2017, I set out on a year-long journey across Africa. Starting in Cape Town, I gave myself twelve months to make my way back to London, traveling primarily by local bus. It is impossible to fully capture what that journey meant; Crossing the cradle of humanity, experiencing its vastness, and learning from the countless encounters along the way.

What I can say is that thousands of people made it possible, offering help, kindness, and safety throughout. Simon was one of them.

Back home and years later, I translated that photograph into code in a project we called PIXEL FACES, breaking it into thousands of tiny squares to echo the pixel’s language. By deconstructing the face into discrete blocks of colour, the work mirrors memories themselves: partial, fragmented, yet unmistakably whole. This piece invites viewers to connect those fragments, tracing the hidden threads of inspiration that link a moment in an Indian market to the abstract geometry of the digital canvas.