Inside the Studio: How 6 Contemporary Painters Actually Work
By Vik Chadha · April 5, 2024
Inside the Studio: How 6 Contemporary Painters Actually Work
Knowing how a painting was made changes how you see it. A canvas finished in one fast night session holds its energy differently from one built up over weeks. A surface that was scraped back reads differently once you know the scraping was the point. For collectors, studio practice also explains practical things: why an artist makes so few works a year, why sizes vary, why some surfaces need more care than others.
This piece doesn't describe studio visits I made. It draws on interviews and studio features the painters gave to reputable publications, linked throughout, so you can read their own words in full. I chose six painters at different career stages, working in London, Brooklyn, Indonesia and Tokyo, whose descriptions of their process are unusually concrete.
1. Jadé Fadojutimi: Painting at Night, to a Soundtrack
Born: 1993, London Medium: Oil, acrylic, oil pastel and oil stick on canvas Galleries: Gagosian, Taka Ishii Gallery
Fadojutimi's large abstractions look fast because they often are. In a 2021 W Magazine interview, she described working alone, at night, often finishing a painting in a single session. She paints to anime and video-game soundtracks that remind her of childhood, and she moves while she works: "There's a lot of running, jumping, dancing." When a session ends around dawn, she goes home to sleep and her assistants prepare the studio for the next one.
Writing is part of the process. She may stop halfway through a painting to write, and texts are displayed on a studio wall. In a 2023 Studio Museum in Harlem feature, she said, "While I'm painting, I might throw a brush down to write down a thought." She also surrounds herself with objects and plants that feel special to her, which she calls "setting the stage for painting." Once, she put fresh flowers on a table in front of a canvas and painted the arrangement.
What it means for collectors: The speed is visible in the work, in long sweeping marks and layered oil stick. These are physical, high-energy surfaces made in bursts, and the output is limited by the intensity of the sessions.
Recent shows: DWELVE: A Goosebump in Memory at Gagosian in New York (November 7 to December 21, 2024) and Our Inner Tide at Taka Ishii Gallery in Tokyo (December 20, 2025 to January 31, 2026), which included her first soundscape installation. Her galleries list her as working in London; Tokyo Weekender reported that she moved her studio to Tokyo in autumn 2025.
2. Flora Yukhnovich: Rococo by Brush and Sponge
Born: 1990, based in London Medium: Oil on linen Gallery: Victoria Miro
Yukhnovich paints swirling, pastel abstractions that rework 18th-century Rococo painting. Apollo's 2023 studio feature describes her studio at the top of the Biscuit Factory in Bermondsey, under skylights and a pitched glass roof. Her day starts with coffee while looking at the work, then admin, then painting. Podcasts go on for manual tasks like laying grounds; music is for regulating her mood. She keeps an archive of bridal magazines going back to 2016 for bouquet references, and books on Joan Mitchell, Rubens and Jenny Saville sit open under her paintings, covered in paint.
Her 2024 interview with Studio International gets into technique. She starts on a pale-yellow or pale-violet ground, makes digital collages as loose guides, applies paint with brushes and sponges, mixes on a glass palette as she goes, works from a set palette of eight colours, and keeps several canvases going at once. Removal matters as much as application: "So much of the rhythm is made by taking paint off the canvas." She also needs time to get into the work: "I need about seven hours of working before I'm there."
For her 2026 Venice show Egg, she worked on unprimed linen for the first time, mostly in blues and greens, according to Whitewall.
What it means for collectors: The softness of these paintings is engineered. The coloured ground, the sponge work and the wiping-back are what make the surfaces glow, so they reward close looking and good, even lighting.
Recent shows: A dialogue with François Boucher at the Wallace Collection in London (June 5 to November 3, 2024), a mural at The Frick Collection in New York (September 3, 2025 to March 9, 2026), and Egg at Victoria Miro Venice (May 5 to July 4, 2026).
3. Michael Armitage: Painting on Bark Cloth
Born: 1984, Nairobi Medium: Oil on lubugo bark cloth Gallery: White Cube
Armitage's support matters as much as his paint. He works on lubugo, a bark cloth made from the inner bark of a fig tree, which, as Apollo explained in 2026, is "lightly burned, cleaned, soaked in water and beaten for several days with wooden mallets." The ridged mallets leave marks in the cloth before any paint goes on. Supply is a constraint: "It takes six months to source one roll that, though many metres long, is never more than a metre wide." Apollo reports he has more recently also used Sumatran bark cloth with a similar texture.
In a 2020 Brooklyn Rail conversation with Toby Kamps, he explained how the cloth shapes the image. Seams and holes can decide a composition. For Anthill (2017), he left a deformed piece of cloth stretched for about two years until he found a drawing and a story that fitted its holes. Once stretched and primed on a normal stretcher, the cloth "began to operate just like a normal canvas." He works from his own photographs, other people's photos and online videos, and draws in re-wettable Prout's ink: "You can leave your drawing for something like three days and come back and still work into it." Some drawings wait years before becoming paintings.
What it means for collectors: The holes, seams and texture are part of the work, not damage. Bark cloth is an unusual support, so any condition questions should go to the gallery and a conservator who knows it.
Recent shows: Alien Shores at White Cube Bermondsey in London (July 9 to September 7, 2025) and The Promise of Change at the Pinault Collection's Palazzo Grassi in Venice (March 29, 2026 to January 10, 2027). White Cube lists him as living and working between Indonesia and Nairobi.
4. Lynette Yiadom-Boakye: One Day, One Painting
Born: 1977, London; lives and works in London Medium: Oil on canvas and linen Galleries: Corvi-Mora, Jack Shainman
Yiadom-Boakye paints portraits of people who don't exist. In a 2013 Tate studio visit, she explained that her figures come from a "scrapbook of memories" rather than photographs or sitters, and that each painting was finished in a single day. Her reason then was blunt: "Coming back to a work never improves it."
She later gave a more practical account in a 2020 Tate Etc. interview with Antwaun Sargent. Her studio was warm, paint half-dried overnight, and going back into it produced "a muddy, scratchy, crappy surface." Learning to work on linen properly let her spread some paintings over a few days. But speed is still central: "I'm too impatient to spend months and months on anything."
What it means for collectors: The single-session method is why the brushwork is so fluid and the backgrounds so open. It also explains the restraint of the surfaces: nothing is overworked because nothing was allowed to be.
Recent shows: Keep The Moon Amongst Ourselves at Corvi-Mora in London (2025) and Many A Moonlit Caveat at Jack Shainman in New York (April 24 to July 31, 2026).
5. Shara Hughes: No Sketches, No Premixed Palette
Born: 1981, Atlanta; based in Brooklyn Medium: Oil, acrylic and dye on canvas Gallery: David Kordansky Gallery
Hughes paints invented landscapes in saturated, unnatural colour. A 2025 CULTURED profile describes her routine in a Greenpoint studio: she arrives around 10 a.m., puts on music, answers emails, and deliberately ignores the painting at first. "Typically I get amped up around noon—then I sort of get lost." She makes no preparatory sketches, even for mural commissions, and works up to the last minute before a show.
In a 2019 Brooklyn Rail interview, she said, "I don't premix palettes or anything like that," and described starting paintings "super abstractly," with no painting made in one session. A studio feature for Collectors Agenda adds how she knows a painting is done: she keeps just-finished work in view, and if her eye keeps returning to one spot, it isn't finished yet.
What it means for collectors: Because the landscapes are improvised rather than planned, each one is a record of decisions made on the canvas. That makes the paintings feel unrepeatable, and it explains why no two of her shows look alike.
Recent shows: Weather Report at David Kordansky in New York (September 4 to October 18, 2025) and Inside Outside, her first mid-career survey, at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach (November 15, 2025 to March 1, 2026).
6. Salman Toor: Six Hours, Wet on Wet
Born: 1983, Lahore; lives and works in New York Medium: Oil, often on panel, also on linen and canvas Gallery: Luhring Augustine
Toor paints intimate, crowded scenes of queer life, often in a green-tinged palette. In a 2025 CULTURED interview ahead of his show Wish Maker, he explained that he needs long, uninterrupted days at his Bushwick studio: "If I come here, I need at least six hours with nothing in the way." He paints quickly and loosely: "It's done very wet-on-wet." He relies on underpainting, which he compares to grisaille, and leaves some passages thin and washed out because "I'm drawing with the brush." When a painting is finished, he photographs it and turns it to face the wall.
What it means for collectors: The thin, wet paint and visible underlayers are deliberate, not unfinished. Look at the edges of the figures, where the underpainting often shows through.
Recent shows: Wish Maker at Luhring Augustine in New York (May 2 to July 25, 2025) and Someone Like You, his first major European exhibition, at The Courtauld in London (October 2, 2026 to January 10, 2027). If you're in London this autumn, it's worth the trip.
What These Practices Have in Common
Read side by side, these interviews show a few patterns worth knowing as a collector.
Time is structured, not endless. Fadojutimi paints at night in bursts. Yukhnovich needs hours before she's in the zone. Toor needs six uninterrupted hours. Yiadom-Boakye works to a one-day rhythm. Output is limited by the method, which is one reason galleries keep waiting lists for in-demand painters.
The surface carries the process. Armitage's bark cloth, Yukhnovich's wiped-back paint, Toor's thin underpainting and Fadojutimi's oil stick are all choices you can see. When you look at a painting in person, look at the edges and the thinnest passages. That's where the process shows.
Source material varies widely. Yiadom-Boakye works from imagination, Armitage from photographs and video, Yukhnovich from art history and bridal magazines, Hughes from nothing planned at all. None is better than the others, but knowing which you're looking at helps you read the work.
Finishing is a judgement call. Hughes watches where her eye snags. Toor turns finished work to the wall. Yiadom-Boakye stops at the end of the day. Asking an artist how they know a work is done is one of the most revealing questions you can ask.
If You Get the Chance to Visit a Studio
Most collectors will never visit these six studios. The artists are represented by major galleries, and their studios are private workplaces. But at earlier career stages, and especially with artists who sell directly or through smaller galleries, studio visits do happen. Here's how to make one go well.
How to ask
- Through the gallery, if there is one. If an artist has gallery representation, ask the gallery. Going around it to buy directly damages the artist's relationship with the people who sell their work.
- Directly, if the artist is unrepresented. A short, specific email works best. Name a work or exhibition you saw, say what drew you to it, and ask whether they host studio visits. Offer to fit their schedule.
- Through open studios. Many cities and art schools run open-studio weekends, which are an easy, low-pressure way in.
Before you go
Read whatever interviews and exhibition texts exist, like the ones linked above. Look at the artist's recent work so you can ask about specific pieces. If you're interested in buying, ask the gallery or artist for current availability and prices in advance, so money doesn't take over the visit.
During the visit
Let the artist lead. Good questions are about process: what they're working on, how a painting starts, how they know it's done, what materials they use and why. Don't touch work without asking, don't photograph without permission, and keep an eye on the time. An hour is usually plenty unless the artist suggests otherwise.
Avoid questions about investment value and requests to make "something like that one, but in blue." Commissions are a separate conversation, and some artists don't take them at all.
Buying from the studio
If the artist has a gallery, purchases normally go through the gallery at gallery prices, even if you saw the work in the studio. If the artist sells directly, ask for an invoice with title, date, medium and dimensions, and agree on shipping and payment in writing. Don't expect a discount for buying direct; many artists keep their studio prices in line with their gallery prices to protect their market.
Afterwards
Send a thank-you note. Go to their next show. If you buy, lend the work when a museum asks. These small things are how collectors become people artists want to work with. Our guide to building artist relationships goes further.
Where to Go Next
- For early-career artists whose work you can still buy, see our lists of emerging painters, fiber artists and ceramicists and emerging artists from Cape Town to Seoul.
- For caring for the paintings you own, read our guide to oil painting conservation and care.
- For finding artists before they're widely known, see our guide to spotting emerging artists.
Quotes on this page come from the published interviews linked beside them. Exhibition dates were checked on October 5, 2026.