Small-scale work has a hard time in the art world. Large canvases find their place on museum walls, while smaller sheets often disappear into portfolios. Anything up to A3 is quickly dismissed as secondary: a sketch, a preparatory study, a casual exercise. Yet perhaps this notion of “just a little something” is misguided. Perhaps it is precisely within the small format that we find what the grand gesture can sometimes obscure. Small works allow far less to slip by unnoticed. What can still be elegantly disguised across two metres of canvas stands utterly exposed on 21 x 30 cm. Every line matters. Every hesitation is laid bare.
That is one side of it. The other is this: in the small scale lies a certain freedom – an immediacy that the large format cannot replicate. While a monumental work may, by sheer physical expanse, dilute what is seen, the small remains concentrated – distilled like a slow-reduced syrup.