The Tree Between Two Villages

Sid White-Jones

Although the visual language of Sid White-Jones’s work is deeply photographic -rooted in salvaged negatives, old slides, and analog processes -he’s consciously presenting the finished works as paintings. When he refers to them as “original painting in ink on canvas,” he’s signalling a shift in medium identity, not just process. The ink, the canvas, the texture, the scale - all of that moves the work away from being a photograph of something and toward being a material object in itself.

This shift is rich with meaning. He’s not just re-presenting memory through image - he’s enacting a kind of transference between media. What begins as a photograph is subjected to cycles of distress, distortion, and reassembly - until it emerges as something else entirely. A painting. A residue. A reformation. It’s like he’s working through the photograph’s unconscious - exposing its cracks, letting it bleed, pressing it into new skin. Where memory and rupture sit side by side. It’s tender, brittle, and strange -like trying to hold a scent or trace that’s already begun to fade.