Crucible Year Peter Yuill
The Year · day 311

One year in one room.

A continuous year of large one-shot ink paintings on paper, made in a live-in studio in Bangkok. One-shot means the ink cannot be taken back, so a sheet resolves or it is destroyed. This is the year as it was recorded at the time, week by week, with the numbers it left behind.

JANFEBMARAPRMAYJUNJULAUGSEPTOCTNOV46 DAYS, NO PAINTINGS EACH COLUMN A WEEK, MONDAY AT THE TOP · LARGER: MORE PAINTINGS THAT DAY
Every day since the first painting · marked: the 51 days paintings were photographed
419paintings registered, 2025.12.29 to 2026.11.03
603 m²of paper painted; 288 sheets have a side of 180 cm or more
~2,090studio hours: 1,010 logged in 28 weekly reports, then about 60 a week
14 · 9papers and black inks used, each one registered
1

The idea.

Three dates mark the start, and the record keeps all three.

2025.12.20Conceived

On his 41st birthday, in Hanoi, Peter sets out a year of continuous one-shot painting on paper.

2025.12.29First painting

T_001, 100 × 200 cm. The year's count starts here, and so does this site.

2026.01.02Into the studio

The move to Bangkok; a studio is leased for the year and two large tables are surfaced in wool felt.

“The Crucible Year emerged as a need FOR stability as opposed to emerging from it.”Peter Yuill · 2026.03.01

The year is the ninth period of a practice that began in 2011, most of it built in Hong Kong. It is the first, in Peter's own account, that set out to build rather than to tear down. Why he staked a year on it is told on the opening page.

2

The room.

There are no sessions. Peter lives and works in the same space, and painting happens in fragments through the day and night, at the pace of how many wet sheets the drying rack can hold.

The studio at sunrise: a long felt-covered table under a wall of windows, blank sheets stacked at one end and painted sheets drying at the other
The studio at sunrise · blank sheets, ink trays, work drying · 2026.03.31
THE TABLE

A felt table, open on every side.

Plan of the studio table, to scale: two 120 × 240 cm boards joined in an L, 80 cm high, upholstered in 5 mm wool felt and open on every side, so a sheet can be approached from any angle. A standard 97 × 180 cm sheet is drawn on it.

T_359 · 97 × 180 CM 240 CM120 CM240 CM OPEN ON EVERY SIDE · 80 CM HIGH · 5 MM WOOL FELT
6 to 20paintings in progress at once
6 to 9wet sheets the drying rack holds, the real pace of the work
5 mmwool felt under every sheet, a firm base the paper floats just above, so ink that soaks through stays where it fell and the paper drinks it in, instead of spreading across the back
“I'm not working over it depositing ink onto it, I'm painting into it as if it's connected to me, a direct conduit or an extension of my being.”Peter Yuill · 2026.02.22
3

The output.

Paintings are photographed in batches, so each bar is one photo day. April has 113 paintings and 189 m² of painted paper, the most of any month. Nothing is dated in August, when painting paused and the archive was photographed again.

THE YEAR

Every photo day, and what happened.

Each photo day is a stack of its own sheets, one tile per painting, lit where the painting is shown on this site. The cyan line climbs with the total area of paper painted. Amber pins mark the turning points the weekly reports recorded.

DecJanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSeptOctNov 603 m² EACH PHOTO DAY A STACK OF ITS SHEETS (LIGHT: SHOWN HERE) · CYAN: PAPER PAINTED, CUMULATIVE The idea 2025.12.20 T_001 2025.12.29 Bangkok 2026.01.02 A paper fails 2026.02.08 Nothing lost 2026.02.16 The warm-up ends 2026.04.05 T_300 2026.05.10 Slow down 2026.05.31 First sale 2026.06.14 A new paper 2026.07.28 Painting resumes 2026.09.12 The engine 2026.09.30
BY MONTH

The year, hung on the wall.

Every painting at its true size and proportion, hung month by month in the order it was photographed: the area of paper is the area you see. Paintings shown on this site carry their photograph; those kept in the Archive hang blank, face to the wall. The April switch to premium paper was also a switch to larger sheets. Hover a sheet for its size; select it to open it.

4

The record.

For the first 28 weeks, every Sunday, Peter wrote a report with fixed sections: a raw account of the week, hours and works, steps, energy, the habits he was avoiding, what came next. 28 reports, kept unedited. The share of paintings destroyed fell from 100% to 24% as the work found its footing. From Week 28 the record changed form. Neon asks him questions through the week and keeps a daily roundup, and his answers are kept word for word. Hours were no longer logged; Peter puts those weeks at about 60 hours each.

46 WEEKS

About 2,090 hours in the studio.

Each week is one brush column, drawn from Peter's own brush lines to the length of the hours he worked that week, and titled as that Sunday's report titled it. Solid where the report logged the hours; dry brush from Week 28, where they are Peter's estimate of about 60. In violet, the share of all paintings made so far that had been destroyed, kept while the reports recorded it. Hover a week for its report.

“This week was the first time in the Crucible Year I can see the light at the end of the tunnel as far as creating work goes.”Peter Yuill · 2026.02.22
  1. 0Crucible Baseline Capture2025.12.20 · 0 h · 0 works
  2. 1Infrastructure and Ignition2025.12.28 · 5 h · 0 works
  3. 2Move and First Contact2026.01.04 · 10 h · 1 works
  4. 3Permanent Studio Secured2026.01.11 · 10 h · 0 works
  5. 4Sciatica Crash and Domestic Hold2026.01.17 · 5 h · 0 works
  6. 5Ignition Under Constraint2026.01.25 · 25 h · 12 works
  7. 6Infrastructure While Making2026.02.01 · 30 h · 16 works
  8. 7White Paper and Institutional Alignment2026.02.09 · 40 h · 27 works
  9. 8Masterpiece Refactor and Somatic Scaling2026.02.15 · 40 h · 4 works
  10. 9The Theory Lands and The Surface Confirms2026.02.22 · 40 h · 15 works
  11. 10The Architect's Holiday2026.03.01 · 20 h
  12. 11The Judgment Architecture2026.03.08 · 20 h · 0 works
  13. 12The Return2026.03.15 · 30 h · 28 works
  14. 13Self-Hosted2026.03.22 · 50 h · 30 works
  15. 14The Warm-Up Ends2026.03.29 · 50 h · 26 works
  16. 15The Red Star Lands2026.04.05 · 55 h · 23 works
  17. 16First Fatigue2026.04.12 · 40 h · 35 works
  18. 17The First Fives2026.04.19 · 55 h · 28 works
  19. 18S3 Breaks Out2026.04.26 · 50 h · 27 works
  20. 19The Body Wins2026.05.06 · 40 h · 3 works
  21. 20T_3002026.05.10 · 50 h · 28 works
  22. 21The Site Dies2026.05.17 · 40 h · 9 works
  23. 22The Eureka Week2026.05.24 · 55 h · 10 works
  24. 23Simon Says2026.05.31 · 40 h
  25. 24The Technology Fast2026.06.07 · 60 h · 23 works
  26. 25The First Sale2026.06.14 · 60 h · 8 works
  27. 26Nothing Survived2026.06.21 · 40 h · 0 works
  28. 27The Agent Wakes2026.06.28 · 50 h · 0 works
  29. 28Hong Kong, and the New Laptop2026.07.05 · ~60 h · 0 works

    In Hong Kong 29 June to 4 July. The new laptop arrives on 1 July and becomes the centre of the work.

  30. 29Setting Up the Nerve Centre2026.07.12 · ~60 h · 0 works

    The laptop is set up to run the work and the archive. No paintings photographed.

  31. 30Neon Comes Online2026.07.19 · ~60 h · 0 works

    Neon starts answering on WhatsApp on 16 July; the Weekly Roundup group opens the next day.

  32. 31Photographing the Archive2026.07.26 · ~60 h · 0 works

    Every painting is photographed again in raw format with a white balance meter, for archive and analysis.

  33. 32Eleven on a New Paper2026.08.02 · ~60 h · 11 works

    Eleven paintings on a new batch of bark paper, photographed on 28 July.

  34. 33Raw Files, Edited by Hand2026.08.09 · ~60 h · 0 works

    The photography goes on: lighting checked, each image edited as a 16-bit TIFF and saved in its analysis version.

  35. 34The Long Shoot2026.08.16 · ~60 h · 0 works

    The archive photography takes far longer than expected. No paintings photographed.

  36. 35A Second Brain2026.08.23 · ~60 h · 0 works

    Peter builds a second brain for the whole system on the laptop, so every record can be found and read.

  37. 36The Vault2026.08.30 · ~60 h · 0 works

    The archive becomes one vault: decisions, materials, the weekly log and every painting's record in one place.

  38. 37Questions, Not Reports2026.09.06 · ~60 h · 0 works

    Neon is wired into the vault. The weekly report gives way to a daily roundup and questions through the week.

  39. 38A Night with Simon2026.09.13 · ~60 h · 8 works

    Painting resumes on the new paper: eight photographed on 12 September. A night out with Simon Birch talking about art.

  40. 39Two Days Asleep, Then a Clean Studio2026.09.20 · ~60 h · 3 works

    Burnout, then two days of sleep. The ten-year-aged S13 gasses him out of the studio. Every bucket and brush cleaned; a visit to Simon Birch's studio.

  41. 40Wet Mounting, and the Flood2026.09.27 · ~60 h · 4 works

    He teaches himself to wet-mount paper onto archival backing. Bangkok floods. A slower week by choice, about eight works on the go.

  42. 41The Engine Works2026.10.04 · ~60 h · 0 works

    V23 is built, works, and rates the whole archive. The Oracle is started.

  43. 42The Site Goes Live2026.10.11 · ~60 h · 0 works

    The Oracle's full run, and this site goes live on 10 October. S13 needs its own coat of alum size before painting.

  44. 43Sized by Hand2026.10.18 · ~60 h · 12 works

    His own alum glue sizes S13 to about three-quarters; about ten S13 and ten S14 in progress. Twelve photographed on 16 October.

  45. 44The Statement2026.10.25 · ~60 h · 2 works

    His artist statement, built over seven rounds of interview, goes on the site on 22 October. Sized by hand the week before, S13 is now a much more durable, heavy paper, and he is still learning it. T_397 and T_398 are photographed on the 25th.

  46. 45Forced Choices2026.11.01 · ~60 h · 11 works

    Eleven photographed, on 26 and 29 October, and the photographs exported again on the 30th. His mixed inks blend together in the large water vats, and a 70 cm brush, he notes, needs a 75 cm tray. The forced choices between paintings he began in June start again on a new page, with 2,024 votes by Sunday. V24's scores are about to be set beside them.

5

The turn.

At the end of May, in the week his mentor told him he was a better artist than he was showing, Peter looked back over the work and saw what the counting had done to it.

“I had the realisation that I've been rushing works to try to get higher numbers because I was more excited about collecting the data than I was about actually making paintings.”Peter Yuill · 2026.05.31

Months afterwards the Oracle, which knew nothing of this decision, found the same thing in the record: batches registered after a busier fourteen days carry a lower Material and surface rung in V23's reads. It has stayed a lead through every run since, a pattern that agrees with him and falls short of proof.

“It's just proved you can't mathematically map out what good work looks like.”Peter Yuill · 2026.05.31
6

Stronger, then steadier.

The combined score, half read by a model (V23) and half measured from the 16-bit file (V24), rises month by month into June, then settles. March 4.3, April 4.4, May 5.1, June 6.9, July 6.4, September 6.2, October 6.5, November 6.2: the average of each month with eight or more paintings. June, the first month after the decision to slow down, is the year's highest, 6.9 across 30 paintings.

EVERY RATING

Every painting, every month.

Each painting by date, by its combined score where it has one and by V23 lite's rating on the early works. The solid lines mark the weakest and the best tenth of the combined score in each month with eight or more paintings, and the dashed lines do the same for V23 lite. The solid lines climb into June, the weakest tenth from 3.4 in March to 6.1 and the best from 5.3 to 7.9. Within each system later paintings rate higher (rank correlation with date: combined score 0.75, V23 lite 0.45), and Peter's own votes rank later works higher too. V23 lite reads phone photographs, two reads averaged, and runs about 0.8 of a point rough per painting, so read its line as a trend. Most early works exist only as phone photographs, so the two systems stay apart and are never averaged.

13579DecJanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSeptOctNov5.37.93.46.1 BEST TENTH WEAKEST TENTH FILLED: THE COMBINED SCORE (READ HALF PLUS MEASURED HALF) · HOLLOW AND DASHED: V23 LITE (PHONE PHOTOGRAPHS) · NEVER AVERAGED TOGETHER

One engine did not read the whole year. 251 of V23's 276 works stand on v23.8 and the rest on three later versions, the photographs were exported again on 30 October, and the works of 29 October were read after a change of method, set out on the Method page. The measured half is one instrument across all of them.

“I respect the engine. My p rating is not the ultimate, I am fallible too.”Peter Yuill · 2026.10.06
7

The year as one field.

The whole year as one field, each painting at its true proportions. Arrange it by date, paper, ink or pace; the date you are following stays lit.

ShownKept, not shownFollowing
2025.12.291 · 0 shown
+1 kept
2026.01.2010 · 0 shown
+10 kept
2026.01.241 · 0 shown
+1 kept
2026.01.251 · 0 shown
+1 kept
2026.01.271 · 0 shown
+1 kept
2026.01.283 · 0 shown
+3 kept
2026.01.302 · 0 shown
+2 kept
2026.01.311 · 0 shown
+1 kept
2026.02.018 · 0 shown
+8 kept
2026.02.0810 · 0 shown
+10 kept
2026.02.0917 · 0 shown
+17 kept
2026.02.101 · 0 shown
+1 kept
2026.02.153 · 0 shown
+3 kept
2026.02.168 · 0 shown
+8 kept
2026.02.186 · 0 shown
+6 kept
2026.02.211 · 0 shown
+1 kept
2026.03.1428 · 0 shown
+28 kept
2026.03.177 · 0 shown
+7 kept
2026.03.1916 · 0 shown
+16 kept
2026.03.227 · 1 shown
+6 kept
2026.03.2412 · 1 shown
+11 kept
2026.03.2710 · 3 shown
+7 kept
2026.03.284 · 2 shown
+2 kept
2026.04.0313 · 2 shown
+11 kept
2026.04.0510 · 0 shown
+10 kept
2026.04.0822 · 1 shown
+21 kept
2026.04.1213 · 2 shown
+11 kept
2026.04.1511 · 0 shown
+11 kept
2026.04.1812 · 8 shown
+4 kept
2026.04.195 · 0 shown
+5 kept
2026.04.2114 · 7 shown
+7 kept
2026.04.2613 · 5 shown
+8 kept
2026.05.053 · 0 shown
+3 kept
2026.05.0719 · 12 shown
+7 kept
2026.05.106 · 0 shown
+6 kept
2026.05.149 · 1 shown
+8 kept
2026.05.2410 · 8 shown
+2 kept
2026.05.318 · 1 shown
+7 kept
2026.06.0312 · 12 shown
2026.06.0611 · 11 shown
2026.06.148 · 7 shown
+1 kept
2026.07.2811 · 11 shown
2026.09.128 · 8 shown
2026.09.203 · 3 shown
2026.09.232 · 2 shown
2026.09.252 · 1 shown
+1 kept
2026.10.1612 · 12 shown
2026.10.252 · 2 shown
2026.10.265 · 5 shown
2026.10.296 · 6 shown
2026.11.0311 · 11 shown

2026.11.03

Day 310
Paintings 11, 11 shown
Registered in the fortnight before 13
Paper S14, S13
Phase P4 S14
Next2026.10.29NextPaper S14NextPaper S13
Every painting from 2026.11.03 is on this site. 6 other dates with more than five works are shown in full.
8

The five qualities through the year.

The read half taken apart: where each of V23's qualities stepped up for good, and where its reads placed the flaws.