James Kirkpatrick – Foolish Mortals

James Kirkpatrick has a show coming up at Studio 21 entitled “Foolish Mortals” which is a series of new paintings. Check out James’ collaborative work with Peter Thompson in our newly released book Brain Trust.

“I have recently revisited science fiction and adventure comics of the 50′s, 60′s, and my childhood in the 80‚Äôs. This return to what originally gave me the urge to create art has sparked in me the initiative to once again make my own comics, and to create figures with possible identities and histories.

Looking at my collection of old graphic novels, I was reminded of my attraction to the quickly done line work and mistaken colour placement that appears on less important characters in the background of older comic panels. I would watch for errors and often correct or alter the comic with pen and pencil crayon, as if these mistakes gave me permission to participate with the author. In my mind I was helping out—putting on the finishing touches and completing the visual language of the story.
The majority of the paintings for Foolish Mortals began with drawings based on figures and characters from my own comics, new and old. In the painted representations of these characters I have purposely worked in a manner that copies the imperfect colouring and loose-yet-confident line work I would often consider accidental. In these paintings I have also created marks using pencil and pencil crayon to fill in the details of the figures in a fashion similar to that which I would use in “fixing” comics from my own collection.

Whereas figures and shapes in my previous paintings were defined by allowing the colours and lines to develop through a process of layering and editing, the work in Foolish Mortals gets much more directly to the point with new deliberate colour placement, detailing, and line work. ”

-James Kirkpatrick

James Kirkpatrick was born in London, Ontario, and graduated with a BFA from NSCAD University in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 2002. He has taken part in many exhibitions as both artist and curator, nationally and internationally from Ontario to Quebec and California to New York. His work is in numerous private and public collections, and commissions include: Buck 65: Synethesia, Album cover art, Endemic Music, Halifax, NS., Interior Mural, P.R.S. DJ Services, London, ON., and Lower Haight Banner Project, Upper Playground, San Francisco, CA. His most recent achievement is an artist residency that will take place at Struts Gallery in New Brunswick.