'Toya' is my first oil portrait painting on an aluminium panel. A painting of my daughter posed for when she was younger, it tries to capture her quiet reflection and pensive nature. This style I used for this portrait was heavily influenced by the surface it was painted on – which had no 'tooth'. So this made the application of oil paint more challenging. The brushwork had to be carefully considered and applied as I learned

how to manipulate the paint and how each area had to pre-painted to support the

desired effect on thenext layer.

The reason I am trying these more expressionistic techniques in my portraits is because I'm striving to convey more than just accurate representations of human likenesses. People are so much more than how they look. In painting them, I feel obliged to try

and convey that as much as possible.