The Image That Never Existed

The Diary of an Art Advisor

I was at the Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair, standing in front of Jim Cheatle’s Tray paintings - works that sit somewhere between trompe l’oeil, technical bravura and a more ambiguous, slower oddness. They draw you in with their surface confidence, yet something in them is unsettling. You know perfectly well you’re looking at a controlled illusion, an…