writing

writing

writing about painting (and occasionally other stuff)

Writing for me is just a way of thinking things through. It isn't about being certain, or right. Writing isn't intended to cause offence to status-insecure artists, but writing is least interesting or useful when it's merely indulgent - so when writing I attempt to park my own anxieties about losing friends or being ostracised by painters I don't know while I think through their works. I write this stuff about specific exhibitions (etc) as a way of thinking about painting broadly. The disappointments or frustrations expressed (when they are) are most commonly felt in response to weaknesses endemic in the systems for making and disseminating painting - the presumptions, obfuscations and wilful ignorances that seem to plague many studios, art schools, galleries, funding bodies, collector circles, journals, etc in this our shared moment.

These texts appear here with the dates they were written. I reserve to right to have changed (or at leat nuanced) my position since. I am happy for you to quote me on any of the below. I am okay with being wrong.

yellow pages are published texts / white pages are unpublished texts or just thoughts shared on instagram (etc)

(The words are mine and I reserve the copyright. Rights for the paintings on the linked pages remain with those who made them. The photographs are mine unless otherwise credited)

the harder you look, the harder you look, 2025
subjects and references inc.
Johanna Love / dust / reliquaries / William Blake / confusing sizes / Adrian Stokes / Ithell Colquhoun / Smithson & Holt

In between days, 2025
subjects and references inc.
Ed Saye / painting with AI / Vermeer’s Allegory of Painting / suburbs / middle aged men / golf / Ridley Scott / smoking

On gaps and influences (Seventeen years, twice lived), 2025
subjects and references inc.
Christopher P. Green / Charlie Duck / retrospectives / paintings in skips / gaps, holes and ruins / how painters look / Manny Farber / steppingstones

What we talk about when we talk about abstract painting, 2025
subjects and references inc.
gesture / action / touch / embarrassment / irony / matter / looking / Alaena Turner / Jackson Pollock / Stephen Buckeridge

Burn down the galleries, 2024
subjects and references inc.
studio painting / the problem with exhibitions/ looking anxiety / Duchamp / Rachel Lumsden

Duel / Dual, 2024
subjects and references inc.
Patrick Adam Jones / Jim Hobbs / Johanna Love / Caroline Jane Harris / Lynda Laird / Andy Cluer / gaps and mysteries / measuring / closeness / Ridley Scott / 2-person shows

Colin Booth - The Afterlife of Objects, 2024
subjects and references inc.
studio making / the end of ruin lust / Sappho / Shelley / the fragment / cliff erosion

Francesca Mollett in Present Tense at Hauser & Wirth, Somerset, 2024
subjects and references inc.
English Objective Abstraction / English Surrealism / bad group shows

Mark Corfield-Moore at Goldsmiths CCA, 2024
subjects and references inc.
text and image / loom painting

Sherman Mern Tat Sam at Mamoth, London, 2024
subjects and references inc.
slow painting / not caring about the viewer

Graham Silvera Martin at Grove, 2024
subjects and references inc.
Steve Scott / Al Parker / Turned On / video tape / paintings within paintings / gaps

Jemima Stehli at Marlborough & Thea Djordjadze at Spruth Magers, 2024
subjects and references inc.
possibilities in painting / Gutai / Vienna Actionism / Sam Francis / Joan Miro / Patrick Heron / Claude Lorrain / genius loci / press releases

Lisa Brice at Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris, 2023-24
subjects and references inc.
changing my mind / painting quotations / still life / smoking / good natured fanatics / Paul Becker / Ruth Root / the restritions of worthiness

Karolina Albricht - Everything is Happening, 2023
subjects and references inc.
painting decision making / changes of mind / Elizabeth Murray / Gillian Ayres

Jeffery Camp at The Approach, London: gallery notes, 2022
subjects and references inc.
shaped canvases / touch / late painting / Hannah Murgatroyd / Barry Schwabsky

Mike Silva at The Approach, 2023
subjects and references inc.
the gap between photograph and memory / arrangements / the ordinary

Simon Ling at Greengrassi, 2023
subjects and references inc.
how to look

Andrew Cranston at Ingleby, 2023
subjects and references inc.
cracks / floors / narratives

Shaan Syed at Vardaxaglou, 2023
subjects and references inc.
material process / personal identity

Damien Meade at Sid Motion (Sadie Coles), 2023
subjects and references inc.
Steven Claydon / Giuseppe Sanmartino’s Christ in Sansevero

Alessandro Raho at Charles Asprey, 2023
subjects and references inc.
painting white / painting pattern

Georges Braque: Still Life in Turps Magazine issue 26 2022
subjects and references inc.
Chardin / Balzac / Fontana / time and looking / spirits-of-the-studio / quick painting / Sophie von Hellermann / Lynette Yiadom-Boakye / Alex Katz / edges

Composition in Abigail Reynolds: Tre 2022
subjects and references inc.
glass and lenses / ordinalia / tree of life

Damien Meade at Plus-One Gallery, Antwerp: gallery notes, 2022
subjects and references inc.
making and looking / touch / hiding in plain sight / Velazquez / allegory of painting / Max Ernst

Neil Zakiewicz - Leaving the door ajar: why being open and closed is better than being either open or closed., 2022
subjects and references inc.
yes and no / porous studios / Marcel Duchamp / Isa Genzken / Rachel Harrison / spray shops / ironmongers

[sic]: in praise of mis-hearings, mis-rememberings and mis-spellings
about my own painting(s) Ex Libris (2001-ongoing), 2022
subjects and references inc.
getting it wrong / appropriation / hyphens / libraries / Moby Dick / Lucinda Williams / Bob Dylan

Theaster Gates at Whitechapel, London, 2021-21
subjects and references inc.
bad wall cards

The Dusty White Bloom of the South Downs
for @painttech_falmouth, 2021
subjects and references inc.
Jeffery Camp / Eric Ravillious / Vanessa Bell / chalk / light / distemper

Jeffery Camp - Some People Dream a Lot, 2021
subjects and references inc.
Jeffery Camp / late style / Beachy Head / Roger Hiorns / Manet / libido / english idiosyncrasts

Jacqui Hallum - Natural Staking or Let's Make This Thing Together, 2020
subjects and references inc.
Don Quixote / crystaline sulphates / weather / Cranach the Elder / Cezanne / Alexander Cozens / Dürer / Leon Kossoff / Berber Carpets / Phil Root / Tamara Van San / Jan Van Eyck / Ryder Waite Smith / tarot reading / Emanuele Coccia / gardening / Dominic van den Boogerd / Floris Verster / TJ Clark / Giotto / paintings that change

The Bronze Mortar: an introduction to the writing and performance texts of Nina Royle, 2020
subjects and references inc.
colour / blue / black / cabinets of curiosity / Mark Leckey / Wenzel Jamnitzer / bronze mortars / Cennino d'Andrea Cennini / Spike Bucklow / alchemy

[coming soon] Strange and Wonderful: in the publication accompanying the exhibition I Cheer a Dead Man's Sweetheart: 21 Painters in Britain, 2014
subjects and references inc.
studios / anachronisms / influence