Jason Gregory

Long Distance Love

Jackson's Painting Prize 2022
Oil
Linen
36 x 36 cm

“Jason’s lyrical works unveil a fluid painterly language of motif and linear brushwork, steadily expanding throughout his oeuvre. The works are both meditative and fantastic, drawing on instinctive modes of mark making. In the act of panting he is in dialogue with the drama of place, interior feeling and tangents. Jason is primarily concerned with elementary form. Figures have an awareness of caricature, reminiscent of Jean Dubuffet or the linear abstractions of 1930’s Paul Klee. Like Klee, he notes the importance of a relationship with sensation and discovery in his painting. He is interested in what he describes as “volatile qualities which stimulate the poetic impulse to paint”.

A playful nesting of both body and landscape reoccur throughout the work, the distinction between the two is contained by bright colour and emotive gesture. Rhythmic figurative groupings carry through as leitmotif, seeming to stretch or reach, forming relationships with other symbolic elements within the painting. Motifs are rendered with fluid variegated oils applied in layers, often stripped back and re-painted “allowing the image to emerge, change and become subject to the imagination”. His aim is to expose the journey towards a desired fragile internal balance.”