The Ten series of daily concluded paintings, a painting finished every single day, not started and finished, just one a day concluded, the series feels like it has now come to  a natural end. It was never about the numbers but reaching a thousand paintings kind of felt like the right point to stop and get off the ride before it all gets rather out of control.  There were always a number of pieces in progress at any given time here in the studio. Always on a 10cm x 10cm x 1cm canvas, there are still some that need to be concluded but a thousand seemed like enough and those not finished yet can be concluded at some point later and not concluded on the day (and thus not considered part of the series). The daily series started back in July 2020, there never was a plan in terms of how long it would go one for, a thousand was never the target, but when that day was reached it just felt like the time had come to stop. The paintings were always on a 10cm square canvas, always offered for sale at a price of £10, always Ten (however many times galleries might ask me to put the price up and exhibit them, they will always be offered at a price of £10), there’s about 120 of the paintings still left here.

The Ten paintings are generally available via the Cultivate shop but please do ask, always good to ask, there’s never time to keep the shop stocked.  Everything that is still for sale is either in the shop or not marked “sold” here or here, send a message if you would like one that isn’t currently in the shop.

I’m writing this page a couple of weeks after the one thousandth painting was concluded on April 6th. There really was never a plan, it started during lockdown, I thought maybe it might go on for a month, maybe 43 days would have been neat? Then I kind of thought it might go on for a year. I like that it almost obliged me to squeeze paint out of tube every single day, that or spray some paint or pick up a marker pen. a day is not complete without some form or mark making, that is still the case, I do paint something pretty much every day. I was usually painting bigger paintings while these Tens were being worked on during ten minutes breaks, that or drawing or doing something, it is rare that working on a Ten painting is the only thing I would do in a day. There was the occasional day when I have to take ten minutes before I went to bed to just to keep the whole thing going.

I enjoyed it, the series made me think about painting, it made me think about the way I paint, it made me want to paint bigger pieces in a different way, I like some of the conclusions more than others.

Here then are the last Tens, view all 1000 here

As always do click on an image to see the whole thing or indeed to run the slide show…