In Scratch and Scribble painting is not illustrative but investigative—a form of visual and kinaesthetic thinking. Alex McIntyre and Nicholas Cheeseman are interested in the way paint is applied, using brushes, fingers, squeegees and palette knives, or removed through sanding, carving, tearing and scraping.

Painting begins with a hunch and arrives gradually, through a conversation between artist, material, and surface. This creative conversation can be playful or rigorous. By listening and responding to what is already present each artist allows action and reaction to guide their work forward. In this way, paintings transition between a visual composition and an embodied relationship with the tactile surface. 

The works in this exhibition emerge through cycles of construction and destruction, records of a struggle to understand what is going on—creatively, visually, emotionally, spiritually, and psychologically.  Built-up and eroded layers create a patina in which opacity, transparency, and translucency communicate. 

Viewers are invited to recognise something of their own negotiations with the world: our human and continual process of acting and reacting, listening and responding. In encountering these works, we hope you will experience a sense of shared recognition—it isn’t just me—we are all working things out layer by layer.

Private View: 22nd April, 6 - 8pm

Alex McIntyre’s practice explores the presence of painting through surface, colour relationships, the sensual and material language of paint, visual and haptic texture. Her paintings are a response to the natural world and sit somewhere between poetry, representation, and abstraction. 

www.alex-mcintyre.co.uk | @alexmcintyreartist (Facebook + Instagram)

Nicholas Cheeseman’s art practice uses the physical act of making as a means of thinking. He considers the boundaries of imperfection, incompleteness, and impermanence drawn from the Japanese aesthetic of Wabi Sabi. His studio practice sits alongside his Taijiquan and Qigong practice, both exploring the balance of complementary opposites in Ying and Yang theory.

www.nicholascheeseman.co.uk |@nicholascheeseman (Facebook + Instagram)

Opening hours: 12 – 6pm

Dates: 21st - 30th April 2026

Location: 56b Old Broad Street, London, EC2M 1RX (2 mins walk from Liverpool Street)