A collection is in here somewhere

It's been about a year since I released The Hours Between, and lately I’ve been looking around the studio and thinking there should probably be more in here.

I know I’ve been working. There is paint on every available surface and almost everything I own. Not to mention a growing collection of unfinished things leaning against the walls. But there isn’t a new collection sitting neatly together, ready to be photographed and introduced to the world, and that has been bugging me over the past few weeks.

I know I’m not a speedy artist by any means, but I feel like I should have a collection of something by now.

Don’t get me wrong, I do have finished paintings. They just don’t tie together neatly under one central idea. This has definitely been more of a year of trying things, exploring tangents and seeing where they lead.

Sketchbook pages. Small studies. Colour experiments. Paintings I started, put aside and will probably understand in six months. Ideas that changed what I made next without becoming anything themselves.

None of it looks much like a collection while it’s spread across sketchbooks, camera rolls, cupboards and several increasingly optimistic piles around the studio.

I think I’ve been waiting for the point where all this experimenting ends and the collection begins. Preferably with a clear theme and a title so I know it is official. But this has not happened, and maybe I’ve been looking at it wrong.

The work is here. The finished paintings are here. I just haven’t pulled them together yet in a way that makes sense.

Usually I know what the collection is while I’m making it. This time I’ve made the work first and will have to work out the collection afterwards.

It isn’t as tidy as usual, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a collection. It just means I haven’t found it yet.