Ben Jamie’s paintings travel the grand arc of history to reach deep into the foundations of the earth and its cultures. His landscapes are raw organic places, scenes of a world in the process of formation. Rock and river move with leviathan intent, oozing with the energy of creation. A golden light saturated with mineral dust hangs across every view. In the midst of these formations, characters appear like titans emerging from the stuff of the earth: a colossus dripping with time from his hoary beard; a fallen hero lying in a lake in a forest glade. These are narrative archetypes from the depths of storytelling, as much part of the process of creation as the land. In his paintings Ben Jamie traces a connection between the ages of the earth and the ancient beginnings of shared culture, depicting them as distinct strands of one vast interconnected web, a greater entity both concrete and conscious.
Ben Jamie (born 1978) is a British painter based in London. He was educated at the University of Gloucestershire and the Ecole Cantonale D’Art Du Valais in Sierre, Switzerland. He completed 2 years on the Turps Banana Painting Programme in London, and was one of the five Prizewinners for the John Moores Painting Prize 2016.
