The Work Makes Itself
On compulsion, cloth, colour, and the art that doesn’t ask permission
I am not an artist. I’ve never been an artist. People often assume I am, because I work in art - as if it’s that easy.
There are many ways to be an artist. The first is to simply call yourself one - poof, you’re an artist - which ties into my favourite definition of art, by artist Grayson Perry, who says art is anything an artist decides to call so; and if we’re talking commercially, which subsequently is applauded by a critic and supported by a gallerist (within a 20th century art market - bear with). The second is to have always been one.
I was recently discussing these ins and outs with two artists I’m preparing an exhibition with for 2026. We agreed: there are two kinds of artists - the decided and the inevitable. Inevitable in the sense that creating just happens to them. It comes out uninvited, uncalculated. It’s not strategy. It’s compulsion.
I’ve never had that. I’ve never created just for the sake of creating. Even in art school, I was always thinking about what would sell, I realised I wasn’t an artist, I felt it. My mother tried to convince me otherwise - she wanted me to study painting. I kept telling her I wasn’t an artist, against her will of calling me one. Instead, I decided I’d be a graphic designer. Not because I was particularly good at it, or excited by it, but because, in my 17-year-old brain, it sounded a little more business-y, a little more secure. (That’s a story for another time.)
Of course, there are artists who crack the code. That’s a kind of art in itself — the art of profitable people-pleasing. And don’t get me wrong, I know balance is necessary. An artist has to survive.
But just for today, imagine I’m a purist. Imagine we’re talking about art for the sake of art.
So, without further ado, please enjoy this month’s issue:
ONES TO WATCH
Rachel Jones
Colour pushed to the edge. Layers pressed in. Rachel Jones builds a world that doesn’t sit still. The work moves — even when it’s still. It pulses. It hums. There’s no clean entry point, no quiet place to rest the eye. Mouths appear, then disappear. Teeth. Gums. Bits of body caught between abstraction and memory. It’s visceral — felt first in the gut, not the mind. She doesn’t paint what things look like. She paints what they feel like. Joy, pain, hunger, noise — all tangled together. You don’t read her work. You stand in front of it and let it happen to you. It’s all instinct. The hand moving faster than the head. Not planned, not explained. Just made. Because it had to be.
Laurence Watchorn
There’s an inevitability to Laurence Watchorn’s practice - a sense that the work emerges from somewhere internal, unhurried and unresolved. His pieces feel like remnants of something remembered rather than constructed: layered, distorted, often bearing the texture of time or decay. They suggest an artist led more by feeling than by strategy, responding to material, memory, and movement in ways that feel instinctive rather than intentional. His forms resist precision - they blur, soften, collapse. It’s an intuitive kind of making, where nothing is rushed toward explanation, and everything is allowed to arrive in its own time.
Ânia Pais
Some artists work with material as if it's a medium. Ânia Pais seems to work with it like it’s memory — something already alive, carrying weight, tension, and histories in its threads. Her use of textiles isn’t decorative or symbolic, but intuitive and physical, almost like an act of release. She pulls, rips, cuts, braids, and allows the fabric to behave — to fall apart, to hold shape, to become. There’s a quiet inevitability to it, as if the work was always going to happen with or without her, and she’s just the one patient enough to be present. The gestures don’t feel constructed; they feel discovered. Her pieces hold softness and violence at once — a tension that never shouts, but hums beneath the surface.
FILM OF THE MONTH
Three stories. Same cast. No escape.
Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest offering is not for the faint-hearted, but for those of us addicted to his brand of deadpan dread and surreal logic, Kinds of Kindness is a delightfully masochistic treat. Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, and Margaret Qualley loop through three distinct tales that circle themes of control, power, devotion, and the absurdity of trying to live “correctly.” It’s cynical, yes, but in the way that only Lanthimos can make feel somehow oddly sincere.
You leave feeling disturbed, entertained, and strangely seen — like you’ve had a dream that made no sense but was undeniably about you. Expect controlled chaos, the occasional cult, and bodies doing odd things in beige rooms.
IF YOU DON’T BUY IT, I WILL | ART UNDER 500
Air Balloon, 2020
Etching Aquatint
45 x 35 cm
Unique
250€
Dream Catcher, 2022
Limited Edition Giclee Print
21 x 14.8 cm
Edition of 50
£55
Small Makabe Stone Sphere
Handcrafted ceramics
11 x 11 x 11cm
Unique
£195
Arkitaip
Linen wall haning
55 x 55cm
£55
Sem título. Parte da série “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”, 2023
Inkjet print on Epson Premium Luster Photo Paper 260g
80 x 52,52 cm
400€ (framed) - contact artist for purchase
UNSCRIPTED
This book stayed with me. It traces the lives of artists like David Wojnarowicz, Henry Darger, and Andy Warhol—not through the lens of their success, but through the quiet, aching spaces of their solitude. Laing writes about loneliness as a condition, a creative catalyst, and at times, an entire worldview.
There’s something about how she connects being alone with the need to create that felt… true. Not romanticised. Just necessary. A kind of making that doesn’t wait for permission, or for the perfect conditions.
It made me wonder: does all good art come from that place? From a sense of urgency?
If you’ve read it, I’d love to know which part stayed with you. And if you haven’t—it’s a beautifully unflinching read.
Next time, still in London—reaching you from the long summer nights and mild days. Until then, thank you for being here. Studio Notes will return with more reflections, recommendations, and takes on the art-adjacent next month.