In this series of interviews, Bold Beginnings, the spotlight is on a group of 2021 graduates who emerged with a flourish. These artists are immediately noticeable for their distinctive styles: the exciting results of very different research choices. Their achievements has been recognized by universities and awarded prizes, we wanted to find out more about these young artists on the cusp of their careers.
Magmic flux is typical of Grace Jame’s work, and in paintings such as ‘HeadSpace’ the composition of human minutiae on a large scale can’t but feel topical, summoning as it does ideas of the inextricable interconnectedness of living beings. The artist pushes the connection between the fluidity of paint and that of the human form into new realisations, in colours that hum and vibrate. Without imposing an intellectualised perspective, these protean paintings provoke an embodied reaction in the viewer, compelling you to get involved in the detail or absorbed in the overarching whole. The painting is an event; it is a microcosm, a macrocosm.
The carnival quality of these works is in the body morphing between its tangible and fantastic forms, traversing the strange via the recognisable, finding freedom in abstraction before returning to its material existence. Read on to hear more about Grace’s methods of defamiliarisation, her home (and garden) studio and her “visual diary of wonderful and bizarre findings”.
Can you tell us about your process and the materials you use?
My painting process is organic. I let my painting and its imagery manipulate my process. There is a partnership between me and the paint – a dual control. Each dictates and informs the other on how a figure will emerge.
My practice creates a portal for escapism in a restless shift between reality and the freedoms of carnivalesque imagery assuming a temporary existence. My process encapsulates this thinking as I shift from fine detail brushes, to palette knives, to spray paint.
Although my work often acts as a portal from normalcy, my work does not neglect the visually rich material reality offers. I collect a visual diary of wonderful and bizarre findings to feed into my ideation and concepts. Drawing is a gateway between my imagination and reality, a space for my visual representations of this collision.
What’s the relation between the human figure and abstraction in your work?
I am interested in the beauty of the human figure and its human condition. My work grants an arena for conflict between order and disobedience, with my figures, representing the body as we know, and the free flowing abstracted forms you see in my paintings.
Looking at your paintings can induce a sort of trance that one then emerges from. Do you anticipate a particular experience for the viewer?
The power of my work lies in its invitation for the viewer to linger and look longer. The viewer recognises figurative familiarity within each painting but this exists within a myriad of the unfamiliar. I enjoy subverting the familiar within my abstract forms, creating familiarity in the familiar, and discomfort and interest in the strange.
Your paintings also strike one as uncontainable, filling the canvas – going right up to the edge as if surpassing it. Is freedom of concern in your work?
I want to create a claustrophobic feeling in my paintings: a universal feeling we jointly shared through the restrictions of the pandemic, but also how our wide social interactions act to narrow our freedoms rather than extend them. My figures are housed and restricted by the frames of each canvas but liberated by the freedom of their abstracted floating forms.
Tell us a bit about your studio space.
My studio space is my arena of creativity. It’s a sea of canvases, paint and sketches. I spend many hours in my small home studio sketching and painting, extending my space to the garden when I spray paint and stencil. I often work on a few paintings simultaneously, allowing me the space and time to layer paint and review my ideas.
Art history icons and/or contemporary inspirations?
My artistic inspirations influencing my art practice are Cecily Brown, Hieronymus Bosch, Klimt and Sir John Tenniel to name but a few.
You graduated with honours from Edinburgh College last year and were awarded the 2021 James Cumming Award for Draughtsmanship at the Royal Scottish Academy (congratulations!). What’s been the trajectory of your training as an artist?
Thank you, I am still perfecting my skills as an artist constantly pushing the limits and boundaries of what a painting can be. Working on paintings for clients and creating work that explores the realms of paint and what a painting can be. I have explored what makes a canvas painting on plates and I’m exploring digital forms.
