Meowtide 2021

James Jean made this painting, "Meowtide", using a hallucinatory palette. Just look at the water, those colours shouldn't work together, but they do! There is such an extraordinary balance between the flat and the round. It’s like those moments when you are so focused on detail that your eyes go blurry and the world turns into a cartoon. Take the cat for instance, it is rendered with clean smooth brushstrokes, creating a tangible sense of volume, while the surrounding waves are made up of flat blocks of colour. Look at the way those greens and reds coil together in the lower portion of the painting. They create a current, almost like the whole composition is being pulled down into the depths. It reminds me of Hokusai, but then dialled up to eleven. It's as if Jean wants to overwhelm our senses, and create a totally new way of seeing the world. He embraces ambiguity, suggesting multiple interpretations.