Jean-Luc Almond is a British artist who received his First Class BFA in 2013 from the City & Guilds of London Art School. His paintings have won various awards, including The Cass Art Commission at the National Open Art Competition, Somerset House and The Best Painting Prize at the ‘Injustice’ Open Art Competition, La Galleria, Pall Mall, judged by esteemed art critic, Edward Lucie Smith. He has been featured as a Saatchi Art ‘One to Watch’ and in the ’20 Emerging Artists to Buy Now’ Collection on Saatchi Art’s homepage. He was shortlisted for the Le Dame Art Gallery Prize, resulting in a solo exhibition at Le Dame Gallery London and invited as a guest artist at Artrooms Fair, London. Notable exhibitions include Start Art Fair, Saatchi Gallery, SCOPE Basel, Switzerland, The Affordable Art Fair New York, The London Art Fair and most recently The Other Art Fair, October 2019.
Collections of interest include Mark Cass- CEO and founder of Cass Art, Tony Elliot, founder of Time Out Magazine, Sandstorm films- UK and Arte Al Limite- Chile.
Jean-Luc’s paintings are constructed using layering techniques of impasto oil to create thick and at times, almost sculptural surfaces. Textures are allowed to drip, obscure and mask the features of the face, abstracting and distorting it to various degrees. He is interested in how polarities such as light and darkness, beauty and decay and creation and destruction can coexist. Jean-Luc’s main influences include Victorian photography and black and white film stills. Despite beginning his paintings representationally, Jean-Luc’s obsession with the materiality and texture of the paint creates tension within the thick surfaces of his paintings. Paint takes precedence over the visible features of his subjects as he excavates and unearths something he finds deeper, more psychological and ambiguous. He finds this truer to human experience, uncontrolled, imperfect and constantly changing, not static but shifting and in flux. Emotions hidden within are enabled to be brought to the surface. More interested in creating a presence than depicting a likeness, he embraces the transformations that take place when he is no longer a slave to the image and the painting becomes more about the paint and the surface.
Self-taught or art school?
I received my BA (Hons) from City and Guilds of London Art School.
If you could own one work of art what would it be?
Study after Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X painting by Francis Bacon.
How would you describe your style?
I think it is a mixture, it’s difficult to put a label on it – there are elements of realism and expressionism, Although the subjects are figurative, the paintings are quite brooding and I focus on the psychological rather than external likeness.
Can you tell us about your artistic process?
I work from found images and photographs (often vintage) and collages; I’ll sometimes paint over the photo which then can become my subject matter.
I enjoy the polarities of figurative and abstract. I start a painting quite strategically, working on the composition, shapes and likeness similar to a ‘classical’ approach. However, I’m never satisfied with just the external likeness and my obsession with texture and paint leads to me damaging some of the representational aspects. Using a variety of tools, I scratch away at the surface and literally chuck paint at the panel. Through the distortions, I feel I can unearth something psychologically deeper and truer to the human experience. It can also be surprisingly intriguing to let the painting take on its own form. I never want to be a slave to an image; I have to be willing for it to break any second and that’s part of the beauty of it, the tension between the controlled and uncontrolled. It can become quite scientific how the paint reacts to the surface.
Is narrative important within your work?
I like there to be ambiguity in my work. People react in very different ways and I find this in itself fascinating – how one person’s ‘horrific’ can be another person’s ‘beautiful.
Who are your favourite artist and why?
I’ve always admired the baroque masters such as Caravaggio and Rembrandt for their use of intense light and shadow to create drama; using shadow to hide what’s less important and bringing to light points of interest. I remember staring for hours in the National Gallery at the golden highlights and impasto textures in Rembrandt’s work, shimmering in the light through all those transparent glazes. Contemporary artists I admire are Ken Currie, Glenn brown and Adrian Ghenie. There is something simultaneously beautiful and dark in these artists works that I connect with.
What or who inspires your art?
Various sources such as death masks, film stills, historical paintings, Vintage and Victorian photographs, found images. I’m drawn to the pixilation’s in old black and white photography and how we can barely make out some of the features; it allows further room to invent through paint those lost colours and textures of history. There is an eeriness in a lot of the images, subjects often very look serious, it was a privilege for them to be photographed and therefore I feel more connected to the substance and history of these faces.
Where’s your studio and what’s it like?
Fortunately, my studio is at home which suits me as I’m quite nocturnal and so paint late. It’s a bit of a mess inside but I feel more settled in this chaos when I’m working.
Do you have any studio rituals?
I like to work in complete silence, I get quite grumpy if there are distractions and can’t get into my zone.
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