2'b'2' or not?

Over the weekend I was photographing some paintings and I wondered why I am particularly drawn to one size of canvas, the 2' x 2' square. When I last painted seriously, 15 years ago, my strongest work was this size so when I picked up my brushes again last year it was a natural place to start. On reflection there is more to this than reassuring familiarity.

One of the things I like to keep in mind is the need to make work that is easy to hang - the easier it is to display your work, the greater your chances of persuading a gallery to show it. To this end, I tend to work in batches of the same size canvas, or at the very least the same height. Or if not the same height, then at least they should fit together easily - perhaps an oblong and three squares which form one larger square. I spent time reading le Corbusier when I was young and these combinations shaped the work I did to get into art school. There a tutor told me to go to the Hayward where Julian Opie was showing at the time. I stepped back from the brink though and the rectangles never got out of hand in the end. Equally, they never entirely left me either.

So from this standpoint one standard size makes sense, but why that one?

One of the things le Corbusier and others did was use standard dimensions and proportions, the famous "Modulor", enabling the idea of the almost mass-produced building. The consequence today of this process is that we live in a built environment defined by the 8' x 4' sheet of plasterboard. Rooms are 8 feet tall, vans 8 feet long and everything, furniture included, relates to this modern magic number. At half the width and a quarter of the height, a 2' x 2' painting will naturally use the plasterboard sheet as an impromptu frame when hung singly. When a series is hung on one wall, it will pick up the rhythm of the wall. It forms relationships with the room of which le Corbuiser would be proud because the building itself and everything else built into it also respects the plasterboard sheet.

More than this, its scale is human. In relation to us, it is large enough to be impressive but small enough to be intimate.

It is not the only size I paint, but it is my favourite. After all these years, for the first time I understand why.