JONATHAN LUX

His paintings are the consummate tease, inviting you in, keeping you at bay. The colours slide from sweet to acid with violent caprice; the figures appear seductive and mocking by sudden turns; the party scenes, all squiggle and giggle, come across easy and prove hard to get. Yet for all the flirtation of their push-and-pull antics, these pictures manage to evoke enduring frustrations about life and painting, sending up insecurities attendant on both in full tragicomic technicolour.

For artists paralyzed by critical self-consciousness, this can offer a vital form of escape, like the trap-door out of the attic of learning and reference that a painter’s mind can become. For Lux, bypassing the standard checks of analysis and correction seems to have unleashed a storm of motley images and to have imbued this imagery with a life of its own. – Rose McLaren

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