A larger painting that developed over several weeks into this.There are several earth pigments,burnt sienna, ochre and umbra combining for the overall colour of the form. The work is signed and titled on the back. Belgian linen on a wood chassis A critique by Sam Skinner artist and art historian; The works of James Cummins, an English artist now based in Berlin, presents the viewer with the physical presence of sculpture while remaining pictorial.These heavily textured paintings are quiet, they whisper rather than shout for attention.Yet the whispering is persistent, the purposeful handling of the paint, its colour, texture and shape combine to touch us with the memory of a myth or some half forgotten ritual. He shares Jungs ideas about the collective unconscious and the traces of emotional, mystical ideas in his paintings seem to offer a decipherable code of meaning and hope in a world of materialism and crisis. His limited use of colour, which are mainly browns, yellows and greys, allow us to concern ourselves with the direct form, these blend pictorial elements in object orientated abstraction. The paintings though, are rarely concieved as ordered areas of logical yet magical “chunks” of aesthetic stimulii .They pay no heed to the edges of the canvas and seem not to worry unnessesarily about beauty ,balance or charm. The work can be raw and unyeilding ,yet always insistent, present and mindful. Their purpose being to open ideas, provoking speculation, inviting dialogue.
