Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at https://www.ft.com/tour. https://www.ft.com/content/caa458d7-b6ea-4f42-9cef-aa0eef22a107
If you were to take a midnight walk through Newnham, a quiet village in the leafy heart of Kent, you might notice one window still lit up. Rose Wylie likes to work into the early hours. The British artist staples a fresh roll of raw, unstretched canvas on to the wall, then paints alone, in silence. “My work habits aren’t frightfully good,” the 90-year-old admits. “I’m obsessed with what I’m doing and I don’t care about where the paint goes or how I use the brushes.”
Wylie’s paintings — 6ft tall, adorned with squashed faces and gnomic captions, crackling with drips and smears — look like comic strips that have grown unruly. Her pictures have been compared to Philip Guston and Jean-Michel Basquiat, although she summarises them as: “It’s like what you don’t do if you’re an artist. Can you sense that?”
