SUNNY DAYS 2020

This painting by Jammie Holmes, Sunny Days, feels like it was made with urgency, where the process is totally visible. You can see how he layers the paint, leaving evidence of each stroke. I love the mix of raw expression and deliberate composition. Like, how the checkered floor leads your eye right to the figure, who is painted with such a depth of tone. The materials here really speak; the surface is built up in layers, thick in some spots, thin in others. Look at the the loose scribbled outlines, and the writing on the right of the image. The rawness against the more carefully rendered figure creates a tension, a feeling of something unresolved, or in process. This feels like a contemporary take on artists like Basquiat, or maybe even Guston – artists who weren't afraid to be messy, to embrace the raw and imperfect. It's a reminder that art is a conversation, always building on what came before.