"I believe the studio is a driving force in the creation of paintings. It is not merely a physical space acting as a backdrop, but a place that shapes the work. The presence of the artist’s studio in their work has a well-documented history, I am particularly drawn to photographs of Francis Bacon’s studio in West London. Bacon created an ocean of reference materials in which he worked: books piled on top of tins of paint, pages torn from magazines and newspapers, even copies of his own paintings ripped from books and painted over again. 

William Kentridge describes his studio in Johannesburg in a not dissimilar manner; ‘[t]he studio as a brain,’ he writes, ‘the 17m walk in the studio like the 4cm circles of synapses’. 

While I agree with Kentridge that the studio is a type of organ, I see it more as a stomach. A mechanism churning paint,…