A Painter’s Painter: Tasmanian Artist James King
By Art & Design Sub-Editor Elliott Nimmo
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Eclipse, James King
For someone so dedicated to painting, it is intriguing that photography and the mechanical image are such important influences in James King’s work. James is a painter’s painter (I say this, because I am a painter’s painter, and we’re a certain type) - and yet James is an ardent collector of cameras, lenses and all things photographic. Indeed, on a recent visit to his studio, his eyes lit up when I asked to see one of his favourite cameras in his collection. In this case, it was a Hasselblad 500 C/M. A real beauty.
This begs the question - why paint the images if he is so taken by photography? James’s response: “A tiny, lost image that has so much weight needs to be elevated to paint.”
James and his family moved to nipaluna/Hobart a few years ago, in search of new inspiration and a fresh perspective. His studio is the most enviable kind: flooded with light; not large, but airy enough to accommodate several large works; a desk on which to mix several spectrums of pigment; and walls for hanging small, live works-in-progress. Most importantly, his studio is roomy enough to accommodate his two rescued greyhounds, Lily and Arthur.
James King’s Sandy Bay studio (image: Instagram)
It is here, in Sandy Bay, that James approaches his easel - a large, solid thing, almost altar-like in its bearing - to put brush to canvas, and perform that most mysterious act of breathing life into pigment and fabric, in search of an image.
His kind of image. James awakens moments that were long ago captured on film and forgotten about, and imbues them with humour, awkwardness and living nostalgia that strikes keenly with his collectors and admirers. They could be odd family photos from four decades ago, a couple of hunters poised with their Tasmanian tiger, or a pallid mother-and-son in their swimming costumes.
A summer walk, In plain sight, Myrtles orchard, James King
In recent times, James has returned to depicting the landscape, prompted by an artist residency in Ireland last year. There, he immersed himself in abundant green hills and postcard towns, and made countless watercolours. Painting en plein air ( in the field, out in the open) ignited a sense of immediacy and real-time truth that has inspired a suite of new works painted on his return home. These delicate streetscapes are like Polaroids in paint, captured moments of the everyday transformed with brush and oil.
The Caha Mountains from Castlecove, County Kerry, James King
The quality of light in these works is exquisitely rendered. The viewer can see the clean, bleaching light of the sun falling on houses and backroads, and mistake it for a Tasmanian sun in a Tasmanian suburb. But they are in fact vignettes from the south-west of Ireland. Perhaps it is something in both locations’ proximity to the poles, but the quality of light is also consistent with a faded photograph that James might come across at the back of a drawer.
For a limited time, view James’ paintings at Becker Minty Hobart, or online at James King, Becker Minty and Instagram.
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