Todd James: Warm Welcome

As you enter the new exhibition by Todd James, you literally receive a Warm Welcome. Vibrant, vivid and intimate interior compositions invite you inside. The paintings are

personal spaces, living rooms, bedrooms and teenage shrines, spaces on canvas for contemplation and inspiration. You will find interior paintings within the paintings, some of these with paintings in them. Elements and objects trail into abstraction only to return as figurative ideas. Pots and plants merge with human figures, furniture and architecture.

James has long been known for his lush and saturated palette of primary colours and their children, in Warm Welcome a group of paintings are rendered in this exuberant colour scheme, while another is painted in only black and white. The new works feel personal, genuine and empathic: an homage to the importance of the culture that shapes us as individuals. It would be mistaken to view them as tombstones for better bygone days – they are present reminders of the potential of culture.

Kilde: Eighteen