About The Collection

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These intimate, expressive compositions offer a glimpse into the raw, unfiltered process of making—where gesture, rhythm, and intuition converge. Created in moments between formal works, they reflect a period of intense experimentation, freedom, and reflection, giving form to thinking in motion.

The book—and its associations with reading and writing—emerges as a significant site within Spicer’s artistic practice. His painting engages with questions of education and language formation, shaped by personal experience: having left school unable to read or write, and later, by witnessing his son draw for the first time. These biographical threads inform both the life and work of the artist. The material construction of the book has also led Spicer to explore diptychs—dual-panel works that investigate how meaning is generated in the spaces between things, whether between pages, canvases, or people.

Originally exhibited at Goldsmiths MFA Studios, London (UK) and House Work Presents, London (UK), the series invites viewers into the margins of the artist’s practice—where the sketchbook becomes a site of resistance, rehearsal, and renewal.

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