Paintings/ VOL 93

Painting is both one of the oldest and most continually reimagined artistic practices. Long before it entered galleries, institutions, or markets, painting existed as a human impulse—to mark presence, to narrate experience, to give form to what cannot be spoken. In Collect Art Magazine, Special Edition Volume 93, we dedicate these pages to painting as a living, evolving language, shaped by time, place, and the individual sensibilities of artists working today.

This edition brings together international painters whose practices span continents, cultures, and conceptual frameworks. While their visual languages differ widely—ranging from abstraction to figuration, from intuitive gesture to meticulous layering—they are united by a commitment to painting as a means of inquiry. Each artist included in this volume approaches the painted surface not simply as an image, but as a site of thinking, feeling, resistance, memory, and transformation.

In an era increasingly dominated by speed, digital mediation, and immaterial experience, painting continues to insist on presence. It asks for time: time to make, time to look, time to absorb. The works presented here reveal painting as a process of accumulation—of marks, decisions, revisions, and lived experience. Whether built through expressive immediacy or slow, meditative labour, each canvas holds evidence of the artist’s engagement with material, gesture, and intention.

The painters featured in this edition draw from diverse sources of inspiration: nature and landscape, the human figure, personal histories, spiritual systems, political realities, and imagined worlds. Some works speak quietly, inviting introspection and stillness; others confront the viewer with urgency, intensity, or emotional charge. Together, they demonstrate the remarkable elasticity of painting—its ability to hold contradiction, ambiguity, and multiplicity within a single surface.

Importantly, this volume does not treat painting as a singular tradition, but as a constellation of practices shaped by context. Cultural heritage, geography, and lived experience inform how each artist navigates colour, form, symbolism, and narrative. The biographies and artist statements included alongside the artworks offer insight into these individual journeys, revealing how education, environment, and personal inquiry converge within each practice.

The personalised interviews further deepen this dialogue, allowing artists to speak in their own voices about process, motivation, doubt, and discovery. These conversations illuminate the ways painting functions not only as a profession or discipline, but as a way of living in the world—of observing, questioning, and responding to its complexities. Through these exchanges, we are reminded that behind every painting is a sustained act of attention and a willingness to remain open to uncertainty.

This edition also reflects Collect Art’s ongoing commitment to creating space for meaningful artistic exchange beyond borders. By presenting painters from different generations and regions side by side, Volume 93 encourages connections that transcend geography. It invites readers to consider how painting operates simultaneously as a deeply personal act and a shared global language—one that continues to evolve while remaining rooted in human touch.

As you move through these pages, we invite you to slow down and engage with the works not as finished statements, but as ongoing conversations. Allow the surfaces, colours, and forms to unfold gradually. Notice what resonates, what unsettles, and what lingers. Painting does not demand a single interpretation; instead, it offers a space where meaning can shift and expand through attentive looking.

Collect Art Magazine, Special Edition Volume 93, celebrates painting in its many forms—traditional and experimental, intimate and expansive. Above all, it honours the painters who continue to return to this enduring medium, not out of nostalgia, but because painting remains a powerful way to think, feel, and communicate in the present moment.