Wallpaper

2026 Oil on anodised aluminium 200 x 150mm This painting’s background isn’t really wallpaper. It’s the depiction of an imaginary Minimalist opus, something that a sixties-era abstractionist might paint twelve feet tall: the type of art so often compared to wallpaper. This painting-within-the-painting, though, is also the alter-ego of the woman before it. So if the painting is only wallpaper, then she too must be wallpaper, which is an unkind thing to say of a person. And if, as some people believe, artworks carry something of the person who made them — some spark of intention or energy — then it must be a harsh judgement on an artwork too.