NICK JENSEN
Nick Jensen’s paintings are reminiscent of bleary-eyed train journeys, catching glimpses of people from the window. Moments that leave you only with a brief impression of a person against the flitting scenery. There’s magic to these scenes, and in Jensen’s paintings, the kind that comes with the chance framing of a figure from a train window. Or the moment a bus pulls into its stop, covering an assortment of people, only to pull away and reveal an entirely new scene. There’s poetry to how each person views the world that can’t be translated literally, Jensen shows the tangled way we experience our surroundings, as figures and scenery intertwine.
The artist captures London in a flurry of mark-making, responding to the sensation of an encounter more than an ‘accurate’ depiction. During the residency, Jensen looked around the local area on his commute or walks that informed the paintings. There’s a childlike consideration, as figures are stripped to the bare necessities, a vague outline, perhaps a splodge of a head, the suggestion of a body, the faintest details of a face, that focus more on the mood of the painting. Where the artist is stingy in revealing details, he’s generous with his marks, as layered sweeps of paint build the surrounding scenes. There’s joy in the painting’s little discoveries, the ‘aha!’ moment where the white horned blobs in Jensen’s painting become a herd of goats.
Some details root the works in particular places; the familiar park bollard looming at the edge of one painting, or the orange sweep of the London overground in another. In some, the works exist just outside real space, as Jensen leaves you scrambling for purchase amongst the marks. Ghostly layers of the artist’s painting process define the terrain of the paintings, past decisions linger, pushing through new ones, like closing your eyes against a sunny room and having the furniture travel with you to the next. In Boy Towards, (Red), 2024 Jensen captures the impression of his son coming towards him on a ‘surprisingly Mediterranean day’, on a red-bricked London Street. The details don’t matter, the warmth of the moment comes through in the suggested swing of an arm against a swathe of red.
