Rob Colvin

Clive Hodgson started as an abstract painter, switched to figuration, then turned back to abstraction after his distaste for narrative and object-based painting grew; he found that it was no longer tenable.

“I decided to make abstraction paintings because they were the hardest, and, to me, most interesting thing to do.”

The elusive Des Lawrence picked for this series an artist he confessed was “hard to track.” But John Wilkins, who goes by WIL, is an “overlooked genius,” he said.

I crossed my fingers and wrote as persuasively as I could when asking Des Lawrence for an interview. The artist Tom Chamberlain, who picked him, warned me, “there’s a possibility he might refuse; it’s hard, but worth it, getting him to talk about his work.” Indeed, there is nothing on the internet written or said by him. I know of nothing in print.

All paintings have their own speed — in execution and in what it takes to read them. Tom Chamberlain makes work that is durational in both its formation (or erasure) and in the time required to witness its self-disclosure.

Serban Savu lives in Cluj, Romania and makes his paintings in a former paintbrush factory. His subjects are his surroundings, his people and places, sometimes painted directly or other times invented.

The art of Eftihis Patsourakis is austere and humane, economic in means and layered in reflection. Cigarette ends, thrift shop paintings, Post-it notes (items only a curious nomad, or archeologist from the future, would find important) become the foundational elements of his work.