Always On My Mind (Part 2) opens Thursday 31st of August 2023 and features the work of 16 artists including:
James Lawson
When the critic Jerry Saltz was recently asked what it is he’s looking for in art he answered “A sense of necessity, someone working in their own voice, doing what they can’t not do.” Do you relate to his way of thinking and do you think your own work is something you just can’t not do?
James: "I have OCD and battle with ‘unwanted thoughts’. I feel that my work reflects this struggle as well as functioning to some degree as a meditative process, helping me to focus my mind and channel nervous energy into creativity. Another important creative outlet for me is playing the drums and for me there is an interesting comparison with the rhythmic mark making, counting and pattern building in my painting. Both of these outlets help me to eliminate ‘external’ concerns and be ‘in the moment’, focusing on the activity in hand. I hope that this experience transfers to the viewer. The following quote from the novel Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem resonated a lot with me when I read it although his character Lionel Essrog has Tourettes, not OCD: ‘Tourettes is just one big lifetime of Tag really. The world (or my brain - same thing) appoints me It again and again. So I tag back. Can It do otherwise? If you’ve ever been It you know the answer.’
Can you name an art exhibition, art book or artist that changed the way you think?
"I found the Agnes Martin Exhibition at Tate Modern in 2015 really mesmerising. There is something I can’t put into words about how the experience of her paintings shifts between a cognitive process of looking and thinking (reading?) and a very physical, bodily experience of ‘being’ in their presence. I find myself moving back and forth, towards and away, to apprehend detail and totality and back again and find myself transfixed, almost unable to move away."
What work(s) are you thinking of putting in the "Always On My Mind Part 2" exhibition?
"I am working on the largest painting I have made, which I am hoping to finish in time for the show. It is about as tall as me and has an underlying grid structure of approximately 1cm square units. Like many of my paintings, the pattern is pre determined and evolves in a strictly linear way, moving from left to right and top to bottom. The painting is gradually emerging line by line in my studio, like a very slow poem, or a jumper, or a rug."
The opening party for Always on my Mind Part 2 is Thursday 31st August 6pm till 9pm at Fitzrovia Gallery, 139 Whitfield Street W1T 5EN
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