Over the years Jim has painted a number of large still life acrylics on canvas, that are both simple studies of everyday objects, but also highly personal depictions of daily life. Two still life canvasses dating from the middle of the 1980’s show a typical vibrant use of colour in two different takes on his then home studio in Ditchling Rise, Brighton. Both canvasses feature the small yellow chair that has appeared frequently across Jim’s art in different media over the past thirty years, as a tribute to Vincent Van Gogh.
The small sketch pad, from which all Jim’s ideas develop predates the proverbial white canvas, and is blank, ready for the next project.
The first still life where red is the predominant colour shows the old fire bucket in the corner of Jim’s studio, with a red pencil, two boxing gloves and a now red chair with a stylised mise-en-abyme in the top right of the canvas on the wall in an earlier state. The boxing gloves are a cross generational reference from Jim’s own career as a schoolboy boxer, in the old black and tan glove, and the more modern red and yellow glove owned by his young son.
The second canvas shows a number of the artist’s everyday life necessaries. These include the highly sugared instant coffee that keeps Jim going throughout the day, and that is swapped for the large plastic bottle of cheap beer or cider every evening. The Rizla cigarette papers represented Jim’s beloved roll-ups, which he used to chain smoke throughout the day, until he stopped smoking a few years ago. Everyday Jim has a fry-up, and the black pan occupies the center of the canvas, but instead of the egg that a cursory glance would suggest, it is instead an iced cake with a cherry on top, reminiscent of both Jim’s sweet tooth, and a spell in the 1960s when he worked putting cherries on cakes in the Lyons cake factory. Through the rain spattered grimy window the studio looked out over the rooftops to the outlines of St Peter’s and St Bartholomew’s churches.
The soft toy and the toy sword are perhaps items appropriated or confiscated from his young sons, who were forbidden from entering his studio, and the battered and scored table is now in his new studio in Hove. The small sketch pad, from which all Jim’s ideas develop predates the proverbial white canvas, and is blank, ready for the next project.
