The Merit of a Small Painting

Many great artists in the past made small-scaled paintings. In the modern art world, however, it seems painters should make larger-than-life pieces to draw more attention and get recognized. As a matter of fact, artists choose the scale of a painting according to how they want to make the painting look. In my case, though I am making small paintings due to my limited workspace, and kind of enjoy working on a small scale now. I can make many pieces in a short period of time and easily carry them with me. When I had a doubt about the scale, Thomas Nozkowski, an American veteran abstract painter, who has produced mostly small but intriguing paintings, said something in an interview that helped me feel certain about what I am doing. So, I’d like to summarize what he said.

-          Not being intimidated by the size, you can feel at ease to go through hundreds of ideas in a painting.  You can get back into painting and make a quick change whereas it takes days to change one thing in a large painting.   

-          Unless it is a special project to fit in a museum or institutional space, you can hang on a wall as many paintings as possible.  Scaled to fit in homes, especially apartments, small paintings give a sense of intimacy and togetherness.

-          If you don’t want to produce the same thing over and over again, making one signature style, you may feel liberated to make different styles of painting on a small scale.  In fact, Nozkowski considered the signature style as a weakness, and liked the idea of saying, “look, every question is different, every problem is different, why shouldn’t every painting be different?  He said, “You don’t want to get carpal tunnel, always doing the same damn painting.”

Source: https://www.artspace.com/magazine/interviews_features/meet_the_artist/thomas-nozkowski-interview-52718