Painting Diary

Long-Form

LATEST LONG-FORM SELECTED BY OUR EDITORS

Abandoning the slop in favour of Stairing

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Our Long-Form section is dedicated to exploring current approaches to painting. Alongside some of our favorite writers, we also seek to publish written output from painters writing about painting. We want to highlight the breadth of invention and play that can come about when painters translate their voices into textual form.

"Looking up and moving towards the unknown is not something that comes naturally to the human psyche. Being asked to raise our heads above the parapet takes noble bravery, whether on a micro or macro scale."

Our first Long-Form entry of 2026 comes from London-based writer Issey Scott, who explores a pair of recent London exhibitions featuring the paintings of Basil Beattie and Tala Madani. In “Abandoning the slop in favour of Stairing”, Scott asserts the act of “looking up” as a tool to move forward through painting, and also change the way we might choose to look at the world and our relationship towards it. By taking oneself outside of one’s own body Scott frames these approaches as a brave and hopeful way of elevating ourselves from the hardship created through inaction; and to be part of a change for the better.

Tala Madani, Daughter B.W.A.S.M, 2026. installation view. Courtesy the artist and Pilar Corrias, London.

Tala Madani, Daughter B.W.A.S.M, 2026. installation view. Courtesy the artist and Pilar Corrias, London.

Diary

REVIEWS, CONVERSATIONS & INTERVIEWS FROM OUR EDITORS

Cannon Fodder’s Chaos—In conversation with Canyon Castator

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Canyon Castator, Cry Havoc And Let Slip The Dogs Of War, 2025, oil, acrylic, and ink on canvas, 90 x 90 in. Photo courtesy of the artist

Canyon Castator, Cry Havoc And Let Slip The Dogs Of War, oil, acrylic, and ink on canvas, 90 x 90 in. Photo courtesy of the artist.

The Diary section is primarily dedicated to featuring conversations with painters and to critical writing covering current and recent exhibitions around painting. Our aim is to create painting conversations that are both intergenerational and worldwide.

"As I look at the earliest mythologies that shaped me, I find myself retracing the architecture of indoctrination embedded in so much of the media we offer to kids—cartoons, comics, movies, video games—packaged as entertainment, but loaded with ideological scaffolding beneath the surface."

Our second entry of 2025 is an interview between our Director and Head Writer Clare Gemima and painter Canyon Castator. This wide-ranging conversation took place at Mohilef Studios in Los Angeles in early 2025. Castator reflects on family, place, and community—and how his past and present practice weaves a multiplicity of visual language into paintings that sample and expand on contemporary culture at large.

Sherman Mern Tat Sam: Criticism as a form of activism

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For our first entry of 2026, we lead with the first in a series of collaborations between Painting Diary and Art & Market, a publication platform that seeks to highlight artistic voices from Southeast Asia. The piece is a conversation between Art & Market’s Editor Ian Tee, and artist and critic Sherman Mern Tat Sam. It was originally published in late 2023 but has been re-edited and extended to touch upon Sherman's recent undertakings to the present.

“As you may or may not know, I am a very slow painter. Things can take years to come to fruition. So I do not speak about the work in terms of projects or even groupings. Things overlap, ideas seep from one work to another.”

This interview recounts a broader history of Sherman’s practice and what it means to be a painter in a holistic sense. It recounts a process of continuously pulling from one’s life journeys and charts a continual conversation between people, places, and the inter-generational changing of the zeitgeist, spanning months and years and decades.

Tim Wilson, Nightstand IX, 2024, Oil on paper, 8.5 x 12 x 3in. Courtesy the artist and Painting Diary.

Nancy Shaver, Sherman Sam, 2024. Duet exhibition view. MAMOTH, London. Courtesy of the artists and MAMOTH, London, UK. Image by Damian Griffiths.

Residency

OUR CURRENT ARTIST / WRITER IN RESIDENCE

Chris

Chris “Daze” Ellis portrait image. Photo by Kyle Dorosz.

Chris "Daze" Ellis

Our current artist in residence *Chris “Daze” Ellis*, a hugely influential figure in the New York art scene whose career has spanned more than four decades. Daze emerged from the 1970s graffiti movement and the creative energy of New York’s downtown club scene. Transitioning from tagging trains to spray painting canvas in the early 1980s, he developed a studio practice that merges urban realism with gestural abstraction.

During his Painting Diary residency in Vienna, Daze intends to experiment with denim as a substrate, combined with mixed media including bleach, pastel, and acrylic. These works will expand upon recent movements within his practice, merging fluid abstraction with representational imagery drawn from both urban and natural environments.

Daze (New York, b. 1962) has held solo exhibitions at institutions including Fashion Moda (Bronx), Palais Liechtenstein (Feldkirch), Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain (Nice), and the Museum of the City of New York. His work has appeared in major group exhibitions at MoMA PS1, the Stedelijk Museum, the New Museum, and MOCA Los Angeles, among others.

You can read more about Daze’'s practice and the residency program here.