In Ian Rayer-Smith’s studio, paintings tower above him, lean against the walls and occupy stretches of floor. Their scale makes clear how much of his practice involves the body: reaching across a canvas, moving between its different areas and stepping back to judge the whole. Yet the ambition of these works extends beyond their size. Rayer-Smith is interested in the emotional response a painting can provoke before the viewer has decided what they are looking at.
Working from a former mill outside Manchester, Rayer-Smith draws on the expressive possibilities of abstraction and a longstanding interest in the Old Masters. Historical painting offers him structures to question and rework, while colour and gesture allow an image to move in directions he cannot anticipate. Forms approach recognisability, then slip away again. What holds a composition together is less a fixed subject than the relationship between its marks, surfaces and shifting areas of colour.
After leaving business and studying fine art at the University of Salford, Rayer-Smith spent two years painting intensively on his own. That experience helped establish the independence he continues to value. Music accompanies his studio days, and several paintings often develop alongside one another, with a discovery in one suggesting a possibility for another. His willingness to revise, cover over and change direction is central to the work, as is the judgement to recognise when further intervention would diminish it.
His paintings have been exhibited internationally, including in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Munich and Hangzhou, and are held in private and corporate collections across the UK, Europe, the United States, Asia and Australia. His collectors include figures from business, entertainment and culture, with several becoming longstanding supporters of his practice. Among his corporate collectors is SJB Barristers’ Chambers, which has supported his work since the early stages of his career.
Alongside his gallery exhibitions, Rayer-Smith works internationally with architects, designers and commercial clients on large-scale and site-specific commissions. His paintings have been created for hotel lobbies, cruise liners, restaurants, private residences and commercial spaces. These projects bring another dimension to his interest in scale, requiring him to consider how a painting interacts with architecture, light and the atmosphere of its surroundings.
Across these different settings, his concerns remain personal: how to sustain curiosity, avoid repeating familiar solutions and make paintings that leave room for someone else’s experience. In this interview with The Flux Review, Rayer-Smith discusses the encounter that first drew him to painting, the freedom of working alone and the continuing challenge of making something that surprises him.
You came to painting after an established career in business. Was there a particular point when you realised art had become something you needed to pursue seriously?
I began painting when I was 37. Until then, I’d built a career in business that looked successful from the outside, but I felt increasingly disconnected from it. The turning point was a visit to an art gallery in Laguna Beach, California. I stood in front of a painting and felt an immediate, overwhelming certainty that painting was what I was meant to do.
I came home and started painting, despite having no real experience or idea where it might lead. At first, it was private and personal. I wasn’t thinking about exhibitions or a career; I was responding to something I needed to understand in myself. Over time, that instinct became a commitment. I went on to study painting for four years and eventually made it the centre of my life.
You have spoken about seeing a painting in California that had a real impact on you. What do you think it was about that experience that stayed with you?
It was the feeling of being completely present in front of a work of art. I can’t reduce it to one particular feature of the painting. It was more like a recognition: I felt positive, peaceful and profoundly moved, and I knew that painting had opened a door I hadn’t realised was there.
That experience stayed with me because it wasn’t just admiration for somebody else’s work. It made me aware of the possibility of creating something myself. I went back to it repeatedly in my mind, and the certainty became impossible to ignore.
Your work feels very instinctive and physical. How do you usually begin a painting?
I rarely begin with a fixed image in mind. I usually start with a mark, a colour or a movement across the canvas, then pay close attention to what that first decision makes possible. I might respond to one area, cover it, change direction and find that the painting has begun to suggest something I hadn’t planned.
The work develops through that conversation. I move around the canvas, step back, come closer and make adjustments until the painting begins to feel emotionally true. I’m not trying to illustrate an idea. I’m looking for a visual world that can hold its own energy and presence.
Do you tend to start with a particular idea or emotion, or do you prefer to let the work reveal itself as you go?
I prefer to let the work reveal itself. There may be a mood or a very loose feeling at the beginning, but I don’t want to decide in advance exactly what the painting should become. If I know the answer too early, I risk closing down the possibility of surprise.
I make choices as I go, but I try to stay open to the painting changing direction. A colour, shape or mark can lead me somewhere unexpected. The finished work may carry an emotion I recognise, but I don’t need to pin it down to a single story.
Scale plays an important role in your work. What changes for you, physically or emotionally, when you are working on a very large canvas?
A large canvas changes the relationship between me and the painting. I can’t take it all in while I’m close to it, so I have to move through the work physically and experience it in parts. My body becomes involved in the process: the reach of my arm, the movement across the canvas and the distance I need to step back to see how the whole painting is holding together.
Emotionally, scale creates a kind of openness. It gives the work room to breathe and lets different areas exist alongside one another without being resolved into a single focal point. I want a large painting to feel immersive while still rewarding someone who takes time to look closely.
Your studio is in an old mill outside Manchester. How important is that particular space to the way you work?
The studio is very important because it gives me room, time and a degree of privacy. The old mill has its own character, but the most important thing is that it allows me to work at the scale I need and to live alongside paintings as they develop.
A studio becomes part of the rhythm of working. I can return to a painting, look at it differently and sometimes realise that what seemed unresolved the day before has shifted. The space supports that kind of sustained attention. It’s somewhere I can be fully absorbed in the work.
You often work alone and away from the distractions of a larger artistic community. Do you think that solitude has become an important part of your creative process?
Yes. Solitude gives me space to listen to what I’m thinking and feeling without having to explain it too soon. I don’t experience that as loneliness. For me, it’s a kind of contentment and reflection, and it allows me to work with a greater sense of freedom.
That doesn’t mean I want to be isolated from people or the world. Conversations, places and relationships all feed into life as an artist. But the actual process of painting needs a quieter space. I need to be able to make decisions that feel true to me before I know how anyone else might respond to them.
Your paintings can feel atmospheric and emotionally charged without giving the viewer a fixed narrative. How much do you want people to bring their own experiences to the work?
A great deal. I don’t want a painting to tell someone exactly what to think or feel. I hope it offers enough for a viewer to enter the work while leaving space for their own memories, imagination and associations.
People sometimes find stories or meanings in my paintings that I never consciously intended. I find that very moving. It means the work has travelled beyond my original experience and become something shared. I want each viewer to have permission to meet the painting in their own way.
Do you ever find that a painting takes you somewhere completely different from where you expected?
Very often. That’s one of the things that keeps painting alive for me. A painting can begin with one mood and gradually become something else. I might think I’m moving towards a particular kind of image, then a new mark or a change in colour alters the whole direction.
I’ve learnt not to treat that as a mistake. Sometimes the most interesting moment is when the painting stops following my expectations and begins to show me what it needs. I have to be willing to let go of the version I thought I was making.
You have exhibited your work extensively outside the UK. Is there a particular exhibition, place or response to your work that has stayed with you?
Showing work in different countries has made me aware that a painting can connect with people who bring very different experiences to it. I’m always interested in hearing what someone sees, especially when their response is unexpected or quite different from my own starting point.
My exhibitions with Gefen Gallery in San Francisco have been particularly meaningful to me. It’s been rewarding to see the paintings in a new context and to meet people who have taken time with them. The place and the setting change how a work is encountered, but the most memorable part is still that moment of connection between a person and a painting.
At this stage in your practice, what still challenges you creatively or pushes you outside your comfort zone?
The biggest challenge is to keep surprising myself. After years of painting, it would be easy to repeat a solution that had worked before. I’m very conscious of that, so I try to remain curious and to allow each new body of work to develop its own language.
That sometimes means making a painting without knowing whether the decisions will work. I have to stay with uncertainty long enough for something new to emerge. I’m also careful not to let expectations about what a painting should look like, or what might be commercially familiar, take me away from what feels authentic.
What are you most interested in exploring in your work at the moment?
I’m interested in continuing to create new visual worlds rather than settling into one recognisable formula. I’m working with large paintings and exploring different emotional registers, from works that feel unsettled or mysterious to paintings with a lighter, more playful quality. My recent Whimsical Matters paintings, for example, have given me a way to think about happiness and the fleeting moments that can hold it.
I’m also thinking about how a painting can remain open: how it can feel complete but still leave something undiscovered. That sense of possibility is important to me. I want each new work to feel as though it has taken me somewhere I haven’t been before.
