Positioned between the sacred and the profane, Jason Thompson’s paintings on panel have been described as hovering between the religious icon and the shed door. For a long time the artist has used found wood and a patchwork process of assemblage to create worn surfaces that feel as if they have been touched by a thousand hands.
The artist favours an approach to composition akin to evolution. Individual gestures within Thompson’s paintings either survive and multiply to produce a final image, or disappear and are replaced by other species of marks through a series of spontaneous interventions. Negative space is repainted, panels are sawn in half, layers of paint are sanded away to reveal solidified patches of colour beneath. This organic and highly physical approach to abstraction has a philosophical underpinning. Namely, that for an artwork to attain a sense of depth, it must undergo significant and unexpected change – weathering the process to be transformed by the experience.
Jason Thompson (b. 1970, Liverpool; UK) lives and works in Liverpool, UK. The artist graduated with a BFA and MFA from Chelsea College of Art. Works by the artist are held in the permanent collections of Arts Council England (London; UK), Walker Art Gallery (Liverpool; UK) and Office of Public Works Ireland (Dublin; IE).