I am an artist and would like to ask…
HOW ARE YOU?
Why do I want to know?
A year ago (April 2025) I began the first iteration of this project – asking how we are all doing. It was driven by the tumultuous events of the last decade. The response was remarkable – click HERE to check it out.
This last year has, then, lived up to any expectation of normality, given the last 10 years…
So, because of this, I am revisiting this project, to be similar, though not the same. This piece will show both how individuals feel as part of a group.
To make this happen, I need your help. The answers I receive from each of you in the short, anonymous questionnaire below will decide YOUR colours. These colours will then join all the other colours in the artwork.
HAY?26
Would you like your colour emailed to you?
By providing your email address you consent to be contacted regarding this project. You will never receive automated messages. Your email will never be shared with any third party. To stop receiving updates, email olly@howareyou.me.uk with UNSUBSCRIBE in the subject line.
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The Who, What, When etc.
I’m Olly Honeywill — an artist based in Margate. HOW ARE YOU? is a long-term participatory work about colour, feeling, and what we share without knowing it.
HOW ARE YOU? is a long-term participatory artwork built from one simple question. There is no correct way to feel — but I wanted to ask at scale, and to see what colour looks like when enough people answer honestly.
The idea began before the pandemic, on a daily walk through London — past faces so familiar they felt like old friends, yet strangers entirely. It took years, a change of city, and a different question to find its form. HOW ARE YOU? launched in Margate in April 2025.
My bedroom is as much studio as bedroom. Responses to HOW ARE YOU? are gathered and held publicly at howareyou.me.uk — but the work moves outward from there: into paint, into print, into physical space. A large-scale mural at QEQM Hospital in Margate is in process.
We know so little about one another. That’s where this started — and it’s still the question underneath everything. There is no correct way to feel. But there might be more common ground than we think.
Four questions. Each answer moves a slider. The sliders become a colour — mixed not from light, as a screen does, but from pigment, as a printer does. Every response is added to the public archive. You may be surprised how close your colour is to someone else’s.