Another

Since 1980, the subject and the medium of his work has been the brush stroke. Nares uses huge canvases or papers, on which he leaves the trail of his stroke, including some authentic splattering drops, with the swing of one movement. The oversized brushes he needs for this are made by himself, as well as the apparatus from which he suspends himself laying flat above the canvas.

His work is very spontanous, yet precise; there is no schedule that he follows. Sometimes he gets his perfect stroke on the first try, but usually he needs more repetitions to achieve the desired result, which might require a hundred or more tries. While it is true that each of his painting takes only a few seconds, they are repeated over hours and days. Immediately after the application of the paint, Nares decides if he is content with the result. If he isn’t, he wipes off the paint with a special squeegee, and tries again. To be able to use the canvases several times, he covers them with a smooth, grey primer.

In most cases, there is only one stroke per canvas or paper, which is usually and distinctly horizontal or vertical, but sometimes he combines similar strokes into groups, creating choreographic rhythms.

Nares’s work possesses a similarity to Asian calligraphy, as well as a reminiscence to Roy Lichtenstein’s famous brush stroke as a parody of the Abstract Expressionist gesture of the ’60s to dance, meditation and movement itself. But these are only a few of the most obvious associations a viewer gets by looking at his work.

James Nares was born in 1953 in London, but has lived and worked in New York since 1974.