Edge of Desire · Chapter I

Learning to See

Bali, Indonesia · 2012–2013

I had a backpack, a folded paper ticket, a guidebook with soft corners, and a Canon that left a red mark on the back of my neck by the end of every afternoon.

I wasn't trying to become a photographer. I was trying to take as much of this new world home as I could.

Bali was not my first trip abroad. But it was the first place where every ordinary thing felt worth remembering.

Wet volcanic stone after rain.
Offerings already fading by 9am.
A scooter and incense and salt in one breath.
Frangipani on temple steps.
Coffee that cost almost nothing and tasted like it knew something.

The eye woke up before the hand did.

First Asia Camera Before Brush Bali · 2012 Observation Before Authorship Before Social Media

Rice terraces in morning light — arriving before knowing what to look for — Bali, Indonesia · 2012

A small offering on a pavement — the ordinary placed with impossible care — First days · 2012

From first day was already afraid of forgetting it.

Camera on a beach, the tool waiting for attention

Flower arrangement as ritual repetition — colour before meaning

The First Asia

I had been to Europe. I had seen cities older than memory.
But nothing had ever looked like this.

Read the Story

I had been to Europe. I had seen cathedrals and museums and old streets built to be admired. I understood that kind of beauty — it was arranged for you. You stood in front of it. It waited.

Bali did not wait.

People left flowers on pavements for gods I couldn't name. Scooters slipped past temple gates without slowing. The smell of clove cigarettes mixed with incense mixed with salt from somewhere just out of sight. Nothing was performing. Everything was simply already happening.

I had a camera with me because I always had a camera with me. But here, for the first time, I was not photographing things I thought were beautiful. I was photographing things I didn't understand yet, and wanted to.

Nobody was curating this for me. There was no caption, no geotag, no version optimised for a screen. Just a memory card filling slowly, and a feeling I didn't have a name for.

The paintings would come later. Back then , I was only trying not to miss anything.

What the Camera Kept

I kept turning the camera in opposite directions.
Somehow it was always the same island.

Carved stone layered with time and rain — attention before knowledge

Hands near fabric and offering — the gesture of care inside ordinary daily life

Shadow and green growth on a wall — light as subject, not as effect

Field Note

I expected paradise.
Instead, I found contradctions.

Read the Note

A young person photographing from the beach — the act of looking captured

A street scene with a truck, palm trees, wires — the unglamorous real

Inside a boat, afternoon light, coffee cups — the quiet shared moment

A quiet shared moment in tropical light — the world becoming larger in someone else's company

Who Was There

Some people stay on our memories simply because they happened to be standing next to you the first time the world became bigger than home.

Open the Memory

Sunset over anchored boats — the day closing, attention still awake

Frangipani flowers in water bowl — offering as colour study

Paintings in an artist's space — the return to making, layer by layer

Back to basics

For five years I hadn't painted.
Before that, painting had been almost everything^ school, exhibitions, competitions, series of works.
I didn't come to Bali looking for a way back.
But within days I found myself buying paper, paint and brushes again.

Photography had already taught me where to look. The early works were not yet confident. They were something more honest: attempts to hold onto a feeling that photographs could capture but couldn't fully contain.

Early painting study — attention becoming material — Early study · 2012

Emerald Season

Mixed Media · 2013

I wasn't painting Bali. I was trying to understand why it refused to stay inside a photograph.

This was one of the first paintings where Bali appeared — not as a destination, but as a visual language I was still learning to read.

Looking at it now, I can see the beginning of something that would take years to fully surface. The green is not tropical. It is remembered. There is a difference.

Before there were waves, before there was Argentina, before there was anything that could be called a series — there was this. A painting that didn't know yet what it was the beginning of.

First Coast

Oil · 2013

No photograph explained why the water looked alive.

Some places ask to be photographed. Others ask you to stay still long enough to notice how many colours exist inside what first looked like simply blue.

This coastline was that kind of place.

I didn't know it then, but I would spend years trying to return to this feeling — with paint instead of a passport. Not the place itself, but the specific quality of attention it asked for.

That is still what I am searching for.

First Coast — early oil painting, the ocean becoming a landscape to return to

The camera used during this period — an object that made looking feel urgent — Archive · 2012

The camera strap left a mark on my shoulder. I kept lifting it without thinking. Point. Click.Watch.Repeat.
The camera became lighter every day.
Memory cards multiplied in my wallet.

A horizon at the edge of the chapter — the world larger than it was before

The world had not changed.
I had.

I arrived expecting another destination. Instead, everything refused to fit together.
Flowers after rain. Smoke. Rotting fruit. Clove cigarettes. Offerings. Barong. Scooters. Surf.
Nothing belongs together.
Yet, somehow, everything did.
I never found the moment it happened. I only know I didn't leave Bali with the same heart I had arrived with.

The chapter that follows begins with a single photograph irresistible blue ice. Something shifted again. But that is a different story.

What remained were fragments. Prints in a shoebox. The camera that brought them home. A memory card in a drawer. The beginning of looking, scattered across a table, slightly faded, perfectly imperfect.