The Darling Jerry Series

I’ve called this body of work Darling Jerry, named after the opening line of one of the letters:

To my darling Jerry,
Just a few lines…

Fragments like this stopped me in my tracks. The tenderness. The gaps. The things said - and unsaid. They felt like the perfect stage for my minimalist portraits; contemporary figures meeting past lives.

Each piece in the series is painted directly onto a real 1950s letter or envelope.
Every artwork is literally one-of-a-kind - a tiny archive of human connection, transformed.

The figures rise through the handwritten words, through someone else’s stories, whispering their own. They stand alone, yet they belong to a bigger constellation. One by one they build a narrative about identity, connection, longing, and the layers we carry inside.

Artwork with history and heart.
Artwork that remembers.

Letters, Time & the Art of Paying Attention

Once upon a time letters arrived several times a day. Imagine that rhythm - this slow, steady back-and-forth of thoughts and feelings travelling between lives. No swiping, no scrolling, just presence.

When I imagine Jerry opening these envelopes, reading the looping script, taking that moment of stillness… it feels like such a beautiful counterpoint to how we move through the world right now.

And art, I think, asks for the same thing letters once did:
Time. Attention. An open heart.

Yesterday at life drawing, a dear friend told me how a single painting in a London exhibition reduced her to tears. It touched something deep and true inside her. And I thought - yes - this is it. This is why we make things. So that, one day, those who need them will find them. So someone might feel seen.

That’s the heart of the Darling Jerry series: the hope that these small moments, these old letters, these contemporary figures, might speak to someone in exactly the way they need.

The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life

Ephemera is humble but powerful. It’s the everyday stuff we were never supposed to keep - tickets, notes, envelopes, scraps of handwritten love. And yet it holds entire worlds.

A true love story isn’t the big mic-drop moments. It’s the gentle accumulation of thousands of small ones. That’s what I’m drawing attention to with these pieces. That’s what I’m honouring.

The letter format lets me explore connection - to the self, to others, to the stories that came before us. These minimalist, gestural portraits become both a reaching out and a returning inward.

A reminder to cherish the everyday.
To honour our relationships.
To notice the tiny things that shape a life.

A Final Little Thought

Ephemera may be fleeting, but the feelings they carry never are.

And maybe that’s why this series feels like such a gentle homecoming - a merging of past and present, of softness and strength, of identity and connection.

The Darling Jerry artworks are fragments of time made tender again.
Contemporary figures meeting vintage letters, whispering:
“I see you. I remember.”