A Conversation with Eva Chapkin
Dislocation
A Conversation with Ian Rayer-Smith
Holding the Image at Breaking Point
There are painters who want to tell you what a painting is about before you have had the chance to stand in front of it. Ian Rayer-Smith belongs to the far more interesting category of artists who trust painting to do its own heavy lifting. Instead of kindly asking your attention, Ian Rayer-Smith’s paintings take it—preferably by the collar. They arrive with force: vivid, materially charged, and often monumental, full of energy, pressure, and painterly conviction. Based in Manchester, Rayer-Smith has built a practice that draws from the Old Masters, contemporary culture, abstraction, and figuration, but never feels burdened by influence. If anything, he seems to enjoy throwing these histories into the same room just to see what survives. Quite a lot, as it turns out.
Rayer-Smith’s work never settles into quotation, homage, or easy virtuosity, even though virtuosity is clearly available to him. You feel the echo of Renaissance composition, light, and choreography. You sense the emotional abrasion of Abstract Expressionism. At moments, there are loose parallels one might place somewhere between Cecily Brown’s muscular unruliness, Martha Jungwirth’s feverish sensitivity, Flora Yukhnovich’s appetite for excess and painterly pleasure, or even Arne Quinze’s insistence on organic energy as a visual condition in his recent paintings. But Rayer-Smith is not stitching together a moodboard for the cultured eye. The paintings clearly have their own metabolism. They push, pull, scrape, bloom, and threaten to come apart, often reaching their most convincing state precisely when they seem one brushstroke away from trouble. He has the rare instinct to know when a painting is about to tip into mud, noise, or bombast, and to stop there—or go there on purpose, yet without apparent plan.
The artist has stated that the essence of painting lies in its effect on the viewer rather than in what it represents, and that feels exactly right. These paintings do not present themselves as puzzles to be solved or narratives to be decoded, but operate like charged fields. Scale is part of that power, too. In his larger works and monumental commissions, image expands into environment; composition turns architectural; gesture acquires bodily consequence. There is something refreshing in that. Rayer-Smith paints with ambition, and worse, he gets away with it. His works carry force, beauty, friction, and uncertainty in roughly the right proportions. They move between past and present without becoming pious about either. Most of all, they remind us that painting still has every right to be excessive, emotional, searching, unruly, seductive, and just a little unreasonable. Which seemed more than enough reason to sit down with the artist.
Sylvia Walker: Welcome to CAI. How are you?
Ian Rayer-Smith: I’m very well, thank you. The studio’s been intense lately, in a good way. There’s a real sense of momentum, and I feel very close to the work at the moment. It’s one of those periods where everything feels quite focused. The decisions are coming more instinctively, and there’s less hesitation. When that happens, you realise you’re in a productive place, even if it’s demanding.
SW: In my introduction, I wrote that your paintings often feel most alive when they are right on the edge of collapse. A bit of a cliché question, but I am going to ask it anyway, as I feel that it is a very relevant one in your case: what tells you that a work has reached that exact point where it becomes powerful rather than simply too much? When is a painting finished?
IRS: A painting feels finished when it holds tension without collapsing. There’s a point where it feels alive, slightly unstable, like it could fall apart, but somehow it doesn’t. That’s the place I’m always trying to reach. If I push beyond that, it tends to become overworked. It loses its edge. I’m much more interested in stopping just before the painting fully explains itself, when it still holds something unresolved.
SW: Before we move into some more specific questions about your practice, could you briefly tell us how your journey as an artist has unfolded so far?
IRS: I came to painting relatively late. I was 37, and it wasn’t planned. There was a moment in a gallery in California that shifted something quite fundamentally for me. I remember standing in front of a painting and having a very clear realization that I wanted to be involved in that world. After that, it wasn’t really a decision in the conventional sense; it felt more like something I had to pursue. I became completely absorbed in it, and that intensity has never really left.
SW: You draw from the Old Masters. What keeps historical painting alive for you in the present tense?
IRS: I don’t think of it as borrowing from history. It’s more about putting those ideas under pressure and seeing what still holds. The structure, the discipline, the way those paintings were built—it all still works. But it has to be pushed into the present. What interests me is that tension between something very controlled and something more disruptive. That’s where it starts to feel alive again.
SW: You’ve said that painting is ultimately about its effect on the viewer rather than what it represents. What kind of effect are you chasing when you begin a painting?
IRS: Impact, first and foremost. Something immediate and physical. I want the painting to register before it’s understood. There should be a presence to it, something that draws you in instinctively. If it can be explained too easily, then it’s probably gone too far. I’m more interested in something that stays slightly out of reach.
SW: Let’s briefly discuss some specific series you’ve created throughout the years, starting with your Abstracted series. Forms seem to appear and disappear in every single painting. What draws you to that unstable territory between recognition and dissolution? Would you argue that this is what defines abstraction in general?
IRS: That’s where the painting stays alive. The most interesting place is where something almost forms, where the image feels like it’s about to exist, but never quite settles. That instability creates movement. As soon as it becomes fully recognizable, it tends to close down. I prefer to keep it open.
SW: From that perspective, your mark-making is one of the most distinctive aspects of the work—raw, direct, and fearless. How much of that language is intuitive, and how much has been slowly constructed over time?
IRS: It’s instinct, but it’s instinct that’s been built over time. The marks might look spontaneous, but they come from years of repetition and refinement. There’s a kind of memory in the hand. So while it feels immediate in the moment, it’s actually supported by a lot of accumulated experience.
SW: In your Misdemeanor series, there is a spirit of rebellion, joy, and looseness. How do these concepts relate to the title of this series?
IRS: It’s about freedom, and a certain level of mischief. Allowing the painting to behave in ways that aren’t entirely controlled, and knowing when not to interfere with that. There’s a balance between letting it move and holding it together. That tension is what gives the work its character.
SW: In Trampling Over the Classics, you sound both disrespectful and deeply affectionate. Could you elaborate on the way you engage with the canon?
IRS: It’s a balance of respect and confrontation. I’m very aware of the strength of those historical works, but I’m not interested in preserving them. I want to challenge them, push them, disrupt them, and see what still carries weight. It’s less about referencing the past and more about testing it.
SW: In your monumental commissions, scale seems to shift painting into something almost architectural and immersive. What changes for you when a painting becomes large enough to affect the body of the viewer, not just their eye?
IRS: At a certain scale, the painting stops being just an image and becomes something physical. The viewer isn’t simply observing it; they’re experiencing it. That changes the way you think about composition. It becomes more spatial, more immersive.
SW: Large-scale painting can easily become empty spectacle—big for the sake of being big. What do you think makes scale meaningful rather than merely impressive?
IRS: The work has to justify it. Scale doesn’t create impact; it reveals whether impact is already there. If the painting isn’t strong enough, making it bigger won’t solve that. But when it works, scale amplifies everything.
SW: Painting has often been declared obsolete, resurrected, theorized, and buried again—usually by people not holding a brush. What does painting still make possible for you today?
IRS: It remains one of the most direct and human forms of expression. It resists speed, and I think that resistance is important. It asks for time, from both the artist and the viewer. There’s something valuable in that.
SW: To conclude, are there any budding projects you’d like to share with us?
IRS: There’s a major presentation coming up, alongside a continued expansion of the gallery side of things. At this stage, it feels less about producing more work and more about producing the right work and showing it in the right way.
Last Updated on May 8, 2026
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About the author:
Sylvia Walker (b. 1986, US) is an art historian, essayist, art critic, and curator. After contributing to numerous publications, and curating exhibitions in the United States of America and beyond, she currently works as the assistant director of Contemporary Art Issue (CAI).
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