Jack Few
“Painting is wild inquiry, abstraction is the music of bewilderment, and discipline is the revealing of those underworlds, the story that’s already written and needs to be teased out”
about the art
From his studio in Chester, Jack is creating paintings which explore the mysterious world of abstraction. Working predominantly with oils, he aims to create a harmonious surface, where colour, form and texture all live as one and ultimately, tell a story.
Jack’s wide knowledge of art informs his copious inspirations. From the atmosphere of Monet and Turner to the boldness of Twombly and Kline, he hopes to find a mutual middle ground that suits his tumultuous aesthetic.
His paintings aim to generate atmosphere and a response that stirs the core. “It’s about hosting turbulent colour and form whilst simultaneously evoking calmness and balance; chaos and cohesion. I aim to charge different surfaces with paint that informs new worlds revealing themselves. I don’t like to paint things that already exist. They’re strips of memory and emotion exaggerated and enhanced into motion by music and a gut feeling that urges to tease out a story that’s already there and I activate myself to rouse and channel it. Music’s integral to the process.”.
Jack in a very free fluid movement, creating impulsive symbols and gestural marks which are subliminally placed. The work is trying to speak for itself and tease it’s way out. “It’s a language I action before I understand it. I love to play in that mystery. Scraping, scratching, layering, thinning, brushing, etching, writing, in as many playful ways as possible”.
About Me
After graduating from University with a Degree in Fine Art and English literature in 2015, a handful of toiling jobs, and a mind enchanted by the motive of travel, I quit everything and set out for a big, hairy adventure, one of many it turned out.
I ventured into the world of touring cycling, the sum of my belongings in a few panniers and the world continuously appearing over my handlebars, a thousand sunsets bronzed my skin and a the challenge put a sparkle in my eye. Although that wasn’t in my mind, it was purely a way of life that I desired; discovery, novelty, challenge, ultimate freedom.
I roamed around for a few years, clocking over 10,000 miles over two major expeditions, cycling the length of India in 2016, and riding from the door of my friends house in Brighton, all the way to India, “Just keep heading East” they would always say.
And so that was my life encapsulated in a few years. And now I’m back, to a city that I truly love, a place which is at the root of my creative adventures. Chester was a city that bread me, that built me up and seeded something very special.
I’ve always been involved in the creative scene in Chester, something I feel incredibly strongly about. I used to host open mic night’s at the old Harvest Moon Café to showcase the cities incredible array of, often, unknown talent. Musicians, singers, percussionists, beatboxers, poets, dancers, storytellers, we had them all, a completely open platform, a great time too!
In truth, in my four year, on and off absence travelling the world, I didn’t paint; just the odd watercolour in hostels with travellers, patterns draw with sticks in the sands along river banks, wet handprints on the dry wall next to waterfalls. A suspended practice that most aspiring artists would freak out about, not committing to a practice suggests killing the practice, but I wasn’t worried, I took everything in my stride, and felt that when the time was right, and there will come a time, that I would be ready to lay down some creative boundaries, that would carry some depth, a real story. Is that not what art is about?…a journey through experience and personhood.
I knew already that patience was forging a deeper channel which would one day inform and charge upon my creative delights in a frenzy, like a billowing storm, a force unreckoned, unstoppable.
