Yuki

Oil on stretched canvas, 120 × 150 cm

Yuki is my tortoiseshell Maine Coon, a cat full of personality and quiet presence. Her beautiful, fine, long-haired coat is a complex tapestry of warm and cool tones, shifting subtly with the light.

In this painting, I wanted to move beyond simply capturing her likeness. The close-up format allows me to explore the character held within her expression, the softness and movement of her coat, and those small details that make her unmistakably Yuki.

As with the other paintings in my Close-Up Series, the intention is to invite the viewer to pause and look closely. At this scale, the familiar becomes almost monumental; the individual strands of fur, variations in colour and subtle changes of light become the subject in themselves.

Yuki has also been an important part of my own development as a painter. Painting her has taught me to look more carefully—to observe rather than assume, and to understand that what initially appears to be black, brown or grey is often made up of many colours working together.

The painting was created using a restrained palette of Titanium White, Burnt Umber, Raw Umber, Burnt Sienna, Yellow Ochre, Ultramarine Blue, Payne’s Grey and Sap Green, allowing the richness of her tortoiseshell colouring to emerge through the layering and interplay of warm and cool tones.

For me, Yuki is not simply a portrait of a beloved cat. It is an exploration of seeing, character and presence, and of finding the extraordinary within something familiar.