London-based artist Rachel Spelling is doing something brilliant with unusual materials. She creates pages of tiny paintings on paint charts. Though she started as more of a muralist, creating large-scale paintings for historic houses in the U.K., during the pandemic, she found herself in need of a project, but the only canvas she had handy was the paint chip book on her kitchen table.

“A paint chart is ostensibly about planning colours for your home, but if you break it down, there are so many aspects to that: dreams, frustrations, happiness, sadness, loss, family, hope, despair, fashion, identity… When you look at my work, you see a lot of ideas all at once.”

Spelling’s subjects are often inspired by both the color of the paint and the name, and they vary wildly. She works on a combination of new swatch booklets and, when she can find them, vintage paint swatch books.

You can see all of Rachel Spelling’s fascinating work on her website and on Instagram.