A great collection isn’t about acquiring objects

Following on from 'Looking for better Questions', where I explored how the most compelling artists are not simply makers of objects but are like scientists - artists who pursue an idea, a question, or a material proposition through their work, I’ve been thinking more about this idea in relation to painting. What does it mean to approach a painting as an inquiry rather than a statement? How does this way of working shape both the process of making and our experience of looking?

Some paintings seem to sit in a state of arrival - they feel complete, resolved, finished. Others, however, resist that finality. They remain open-ended, retaining a sense of movement, as though they are still on their way to somewhere. This quality - a painting in transit rather than at a fixed endpoint - has always interested me. It suggests a way of thinking about painting as a process of continual discovery, where meaning emerges through the act of making rather than being imposed from the outset.

Varda Caivano’s work is a prime example. Her paintings carry the history of their making within them. She often begins with an image - something seen or remembered - but paints away from it, abstracting as she goes. The final work feels provisional, layered, as though the process of questioning is still unfolding across its surface. There’s a searching quality to her paintings, an openness to being led by the act of painting itself rather than by a predetermined vision. They invite us into a space where meaning is still in flux.

This idea of painting as an act of discovery rather than execution is something Philip Guston talked and wrote about. He warned against paintings that are ‘dead on arrival’ - those that simply transcribe a pre-existing idea. For him, struggle and revision were necessary to keep a work alive. His early abstractions hover on the edge of recognition, full of movement and shifting weight. Later, when he returned to figuration, his process remained one of constant reworking - scrubbing out, shifting elements, refusing to let the painting settle too soon. The painting had to be experienced, not just executed.

To return to a contemporary painter (and all my long held favourites here) Wilhelm Sasnal approaches this from a different angle. Where Guston layered and worked through the density of paint, Sasnal strips things back. His paintings often feel like exercises in reduction. Again, he starts with an image - a film still, a photograph, a memory - and pares it down, testing how little information is needed to keep it legible. In doing so, he also introduces ambiguity - his work operates like a kind of visual shorthand: essential yet elusive, always suggesting more than it states. This way of working forces us to slow down, to question what we’re actually seeing, and to consider why certain marks hold more weight than others.

Laura Owens, in contrast, takes a more constructed approach, but her work is no less experimental. Her earlier paintings are particularly fascinating for the way she deconstructs the very act of making a painting. Each section seems to ask: What would happen if I made the tree this way? The fur like this? The sky like that? She doesn’t take any part of the image for granted but instead tests different ways of applying paint, layering modes of representation, and playing with the mechanics of perception. If Guston’s process was about struggling to see, Owens’ is about choosing how something should be seen. Her work makes us aware of painting as a constructed thing—an assemblage of decisions, experiments, and unexpected solutions.

Hannah Murgatroyd’s paintings bring another dimension to this idea of process and openness. Her work plays with the tension between figuration and abstraction, between narrative and ambiguity. The figures she paints often seem caught mid-thought, mid-gesture - held in a space of potentiality rather than conclusion. The landscapes they inhabit feel just as fluid, merging dreamlike elements with passages of expressive mark-making as she builds her paintings through a layering of drawing and colour, allowing past marks to remain visible, like traces of thought.

Clive Hodgson takes this approach to an extreme. His paintings seem to pose the ultimate question: What is the least I could do here? What is the bare minimum of marks, of action, of substance that would still make something visually compelling? His work often consists of sparse, almost hesitant gestures - a few marks, a signature, a small intervention that somehow still holds the weight of a painting. He works with the tension between what is there and what is not, making us acutely aware of how much can be suggested with very little.

What all these artists share is a refusal to treat painting as a vehicle for fixed meaning. Instead, they use painting as a means of inquiry, a way of thinking through material and process. Their work does not offer answers so much as it asks us to engage with the very act of looking - to sit with uncertainty, to be attuned to shifts in perception, to recognise that meaning is something emergent, not imposed.

This has implications for how we think about collecting, too. The art market often rewards polish, impact, and immediate comprehension - paintings that feel fully resolved, that deliver their meaning at a glance. But the works that stay with us, the ones that continue to shift and evolve in our perception over time, are often those that resist that easy closure. A great collection isn’t just about acquiring objects; it’s about gathering questions, ideas, propositions that remain alive beyond their moment of creation.

At a time when so much of the world is about speed and resolution, perhaps the most valuable thing a painting can do is remind us that some things take time. That not everything has to be fully known, fully explained, fully complete. That the most interesting work is often the work still on its way to somewhere.

If you’re curious about starting or expanding your collection, I’d love to hear from you.

Get in touch: www.blackbirdrook.com

Follow along on Instagram for insights and available works: @blackbird_rook

Hannah Murgatroyd is currently showing in NADA Curated, As it Unfolds - selected by Fitsum Shebeshe.