Bringing together ideas that span the painting movements of the twentieth century and the sensibilities of twenty-first century post-modernism, Jack’s works are peppered with literature and history, with further inspiration drawn from the referential lyrics of musicians like Bob Dylan and Pixies: “They're just throwing loads of different imagery and references and that's kind of what I want to do in my paintings.” Adopting this rich, collaged approach to his paintings, Jack sees himself as a receptacle for inspiration. From the satire of Bulgakov’s The Master and the Margarita to the palette of Matisse’s visits to Morocco, he embraces vivid imagery, reading widely and researching enthusiastically.
Waiting, too, is often part of the process. One painting, for example, “is from six months ago. It’s gone through so many stages, and I hadn’t looked at it for months and months.” Having nearly discarded the deep red, abstracted landscape, he made some alterations and realised how much a stroke of blue activated the painting. “It can be weird, because nine times out of ten your painting just won’t work for whatever reason. But then you will stumble across things, and it’s almost like the skill of being a painter is realising when you have actually got something there.”
Often that something is colour. “I think colour is the most important thing about painting and the most challenging thing. And one of the things that people really misunderstand.” With a strong intuition for colour and how it works, his limited palettes emphasise the important relationship between colours: “no colour is isolated. Colours only work in relation to other colours.”
