"People work with collage in different ways" Nicolas Burrows tells us in a tour of his studio — and he is no exception. The visual artist, working across painting and illustration, applied art and improvised image, uses collage to explore the relationship between the pictorial and the abstract, existing at "the boundary of legibility." 

Not only returning to the cutting room floor to revisit old ideas, but literally cutting his own pieces, or working with the discards of earlier projects, Nicolas keeps remnants in the studio, ready to provide inspiration or take new shape. From wood offcuts to paint scrapings, it is these pieces that can provide the starting point for a project, or its finishing touch. "I'll reuse things… my whole practice relies on that."

Does the cycle of use and re-use mean that he is never truly satisfied that an artwork is complete? While it's rare for Nicolas to feel "properly satisfied with something", he often knows instinctively when to stop working on a piece. Often following the principles of wabi-sabi, the Japanese tradition that finds beauty in imperfection, he will work on a piece until "I get to that point where it will look a bit odd… something slightly messy or wrong." It is then that he feels "a big sense of relief", where he might not be able to describe why he likes the work, but he knows that it's finished. Resisting the urge to balance composition and instead embrace tension, often his finished pieces might "look like they might fall apart." Satisfaction, then, comes with uncertainty, questions of "why" and answers of "I don't know."