STUDIO JOURNAL | JUNE ISSUE 2026

Welcome to this month’s Studio Journal.

Over the past few weeks, the studio has been filled with movement, ink, paint, and conversation. We have spent time reflecting on the foundations of the Peony Garden works, not only the finished paintings themselves, but the stages, stories, and inspirations that exist underneath the surface.

In this issue, we step into the Sumi ink stage. This part of the process is where water, movement, and unpredictability lead the conversation. It is the earliest form of the garden. Loose, expressive, unfinished. A stage that was never originally intended to be seen so closely, yet has somehow become one of the most loved parts of the work. We also revisit the Peony itself and why this single flower continues to sit at the heart of ROBERTSONKUR. Flowers seem to appear in every chapter of human life. It is present in celebration, grief, romance, memory and hope, and the peony, with all its layered softness and strength, continues to unfold new meaning the longer we spend with it. Outside the studio, inspiration this month arrived through travel and conversation. We spent time in Orange, New South Wales, surrounded by rolling vineyards, autumn leaves, forests, and winding roads disappearing into mist. There were slow mornings with coffee in hand, watching the town shift colour with the season, afternoons exploring glow worm tunnels hidden deep within the landscape, and evenings spent around extraordinary food and wine.

For us, here at ROBERTSONKUR, inspiration rarely arrives all at once. It gathers slowly through experience, through environment, through observing the beauty woven throughout creation and carrying fragments of it back into the studio. 

Thank you for continuing to grow alongside the garden.

With love,
The Robertsons

Before the paint arrives, the canvas belongs to water and ink.

Every Peony Garden work at ROBERTSONKUR begins with Sumi ink spread across raw canvas in loose sweeping movements. It is the least controlled part of the process and in many cases, the most honest. The flowers are not fully formed yet. They drift in and out of shape while water carries the ink down the surface in long unpredictable trails.It is truly the stage where the art tells us what it wants to be. Our audience have become fascinated by it over the years. We believe it is not just because it is visually beautiful, but because it reveals the artwork before it becomes polished. You can still see the searching. The movement. The moments where the flowers almost disappear into abstraction before finding their shape again. Kurt uses the Sumi ink almost like a map for where the painting will eventually bloom, but the ink rarely behaves perfectly. That is part of the appeal. The water pushes it in unexpected directions, petals stretch wider than intended, drips begin to run down the canvas, and suddenly the painting starts speaking back.

“It’s fun,” Kurt says. And the way he explains it feels far less technical than people expect. Years ago, an art teacher gave him Sumi ink while he was still young. After school, when he began painting more seriously, he found the ink again among old materials and decided to experiment with it. What he loved was how alive and liberating it felt compared to paint. Paint locks you in quickly. Ink gives you room to move. To change your mind. To follow instinct instead of fighting for perfection. Inside the studio, this part of the process often feels more like a conversation than a sketch. Kurt watches how the water reacts, how the ink settles, where the drips begin forming naturally. Sometimes the flowers emerge immediately. Other times they dissolve completely before returning in a new way a few moments later. It is a deeply freeing process. The ink stage for Kurt’s works, has become more than preparation for a painting. It has become part of the identity of the work itself. A reminder that beauty can begin in mess, movement, and unpredictability. Before the garden becomes refined, it first has to learn how to flow.And although this stage eventually disappears beneath layers of paint, traces of it always remain underneath the surface. Hidden in the movement. Buried in the drips. Resting beneath every finished bloom.

Maybe one day, the ink itself will become permanent.

The Archive holds the life of each work beyond the studio. This includes not only the finished piece, but its journey: how it began, how it was made, and where it continues to live. Each work moves differently. Some are privately acquired, others placed within exhibitions or created for specific architectural spaces. As they leave the studio, they begin a second life, carried into homes, collections, and environments where their story continues to unfold. The Archive records this ongoing passage, including moments of secondary acquisition or re-placement, where the work finds new meaning over time. An artwork does not end when it leaves the studio. That is where its story begins. With each Studio Journal, the Archive expands alongside the evolving body of work that is ROBERTSONKUR.

A flower is never just a flower. It sits in more moments of human life than we often acknowledge.

It can be an apology left at a doorstep, a farewell placed in silence, a celebration held in someone’s hands when words don’t feel enough. It appears at weddings, at times of grief, on first dates, in moments of joy and in moments of sadness. It becomes part of the way we mark time. Flowers have a way of carrying meaning without needing explanation. They arrive when language falls short. When something feels too large, too complex, or too emotional to be said directly, a flower steps in and carries it instead. And yet, despite all of this weight of meaning, a flower never stops being itself. It still grows. It still opens. It still follows light and weather and season, regardless of who is watching or what it will later come to represent.

That duality is part of what makes them so compelling. They hold meaning, but they are not defined by it. The Peony, in particular, sits within this language in a very specific way. It is often associated with romance, love, delicacy, and elegance, but those descriptions only sit on the surface. What makes the Peony interesting is how it behaves. It doesn’t open quickly. It doesn’t present itself all at once. It unfolds in stages, layer by layer, revealing more of itself over time. In many ways, it mirrors the experience of memory or emotion. Nothing arrives in a single clear moment. It builds, shifts, and deepens as you spend more time with it.

In the context of ROBERTSONKUR, the Peony becomes more than subject matter. It becomes structure. The way it opens informs the way the work is built. The layering, the gradual reveal, the tension between softness and strength all begin with observing how the flower actually exists in nature.

There is also something important about its presence. The Peony does not try to compete with other flowers. It doesn’t need to dominate its environment. It takes up space in a way that feels complete rather than aggressive. Its stems are strong, its roots grounded, but its surface is soft and almost fragile in appearance. That contrast sits at the centre of the Peony Garden works. Flowers in general carry this idea of communication without sound. They become part of how we express what we cannot easily articulate. Appreciation. Love. Loss. Memory. Transition. They are given and received in moments where words feel insufficient. The Peony sits within that tradition, but we love that it adds something slower to it. It asks for time and it asks for attention. It does not reveal itself immediately, and because of that, it feels more human than decorative.

At ROBERTSONKUR, the Peony is not used as symbolism for its own sake. It is used because it already contains a rhythm that mirrors how the work is made. Layered. Unfolding. Built over time rather than revealed in a single gesture. It becomes less about what the flower means, and more about how it behaves. The beauty lies in how it opens, how it holds itself, and how it exists without needing to compete for attention. In that way, the Peony is not chosen because it is perfect. It is chosen because it feels authentic in the way it becomes what it is.