In Annie Sloan’s front room, there is a small, wooden table that she picked up at a flea market for next to nothing. The carved legs have been painted black but the top has the appearance of dark marble flecked with orange. “I’m really pleased with that table,” says Sloan. “I took a sponge, cut some more holes in it and used it to apply paint. It’s funny – sometimes I spend ages trying to make something work and it looks just awful. And then something takes me 10 minutes and it’s like, ‘Oh wow!’”
Sloan, 73, has been experimenting with paint and colour for over 50 years and shows no signs of slowing down. “When I left art school, I realised conceptual work didn’t actually make me happy,” she says. “It was colour that people seemed to need most in their lives.” Half a century on, in this age of greige and permacrises, we arguably need colour more than ever.
