Painting Writing Texting chronicles the friendship between painter Chantal Joffe and writer Olivia Laing, which began in 2016 when Joffe approached Laing to ask if they would sit for a portrait. From this unexpected encounter, the two embarked on an expansive and ranging collaboration, fuelled by high-speed conversations about art, books, and their shared attempts to understand the world. 

‘It feels like we both use portraiture to get at something deeper’, Laing writes in one of the ten essays collected here. Combining these texts with a dazzling sequence of paintings by Joffe, Painting Writing Texting explores the strange and risky process by which everyday life is converted into art. More than a record of two artists’ lives, it is an account of friendship itself, and the magical cross-pollination that can occur between words and images.