How Long Does a Piece Take?

It's one of the questions most commonly asked by visitors to the gallery – and the answer may be surprising.

The sketches – of Melbourne, New York, Rome, and beyond – are fast by necessity. Most are done in under two hours, because the moment they capture – a restaurant service, a sporting event, a single evening – doesn't wait. Kristan's goal is always the same: to tell the full story of that moment in the fewest possible strokes, without losing anything essential.

It's why the sketches are made to be timeless – the people purposely left featureless, with no insinuation of cars or telephones – a way of anchoring a specific moment in time that is as relevant the day it was drawn as it will be in a hundred years.

The paintings are a different story entirely. Most take around a month from first stroke to last, though even this varies greatly. The longest painting Kristan has ever completed took ten years – he returned to it again and again, adjusting the sky and the colour palette each time, until it finally felt right. It became, in many ways, a masterclass in colour theory that has informed everything that came after it.

Of the longer pieces currently available, Eternal Exploration took twelve months to complete – something visible in the piece itself, a process of layer upon layer that ensures something new to enjoy each time you look at it.

As for knowing when a piece is finished, that is sometimes harder to explain than the timeline itself. Kristan compares it to the feeling of a satisfying meal – eat too much and you feel it, eat too little and you're still hungry. There's a point of balance, and it's one he's learned to recognise over time.

These are the things that allow every sketch and painting in the gallery to tell its own story – ones you'll hear when you visit, and ones you'll see each day one of Kristan's artworks hangs on your wall.

Interested in joining us at our official gallery opening at the end of August? Please get in touch via contact@oud.art