50x50 paintings

How does my trade compare to your trade?

These 50 small paintings formed a stand alone project in 2013/14 where I produced a piece of work at every studio visit over a period of 3 months. It was motivated by conversations on how artists approach and structure their working lives and how akin this is to other types of work, trade or job.

I set out to replicate a ‘normal’ working situation – a given period of time at the workplace, with a given output, for a given sum of remuneration; £50, which was an approximation of the UK’s daily minimum wage at that time.

Although this intensity helped the work progress and develop quickly, I hoped that in choosing this way of working, there was a heightened sense of the project being a type of fool’s errand, an unsustainable model, perhaps unviable long term financially and creatively.