A collection is in here somewhere

It has 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, through sketchbook pages, small studies, colour experiments, paintings I started, put aside and will probably understand in six months, and 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 Hours Between came together when I drew a line around one season of work. This time, I kept going for a whole year before I stopped to look at what I had made.

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

It isn’t less tidy than usual. There is just more of it.