James Nares
South Street
2017
Oil on linen
64 x 48 in.
James Nares is a contemporary British artist known his large calligraphic paintings. Inspired by Roy Lichtenstein’s iconic depictions of brushstrokes, Nares’ paintings are intuitive and gestural, created in a single swipe of the brush. He may erase and attempt the same stroke over and over again, continuing until he achieves a desired precision and feels he is successful. “A lot of it had to do with reinventing the brush, the surface, and the paint,” he explained of his process. “They're pretty simple, the ingredients to my paintings. I like to think of it as like making bread or something. A little change in the recipe and you get something completely different.” Born in 1953 in London, England, Nares went on to study at the School of Visual Arts in New York, soon becoming an integral part of the late 1970s downtown Manhattan art scene, initially working in film and creating a series titled No Wave. Today, his work is found in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and the Albright-Knox Art Museum in Buffalo, among others. Nares lives and works in New York, NY.
courtesy of artnet.com