Jean-Luc Almond
Jean-Luc Almond is an emerging british artist who received his BFA in 2013 from the City & Guilds of London Art School. His paintings have won various awards, including the winner of The Cass Art Commission of the National Open Art Competition, Somerset House (2014); he was also the winner of The Best Painting Prize at “Injustice” Open Art Competition, La Galleria, Pall Mall, (2014).
In 2015 he was featured as Saatchi Art's 'One to Watch' and in 'the Best of 2015' and '20 Emerging Artists to Buy Now' Collections on Saatchi Art's homepage. Recent exhibits include SCOPE Basel, Switzerland, 14-19 June, 2016 Jean-Luc paintings are constructed through the processes of creation and destruction, damage and repair. He is influenced by ‘memorial portraiture’ (also known as post mortem photography, which was a popular early 19th century photographic process for immortalizing deceased loved ones). He layers multiple paintings on top of each other before scratching away at the surface to reveal phantasmic faces peering from beneath.
Jean-Luc is obsessed with the materiality and texture of the paint itself. A certain tension exists within the thick surfaces of his paintings, as paint can take precedence over the act of representation. He is obsessed by texture and the transformations that take place when he is no longer a slave to the image and the painting becomes more about the paint and the surface. He see's paint as a vulnerable skin hovering and clinging to the subject, masking its identity but enlivening the image.
In 2015 he was featured as Saatchi Art's 'One to Watch' and in 'the Best of 2015' and '20 Emerging Artists to Buy Now' Collections on Saatchi Art's homepage. Recent exhibits include SCOPE Basel, Switzerland, 14-19 June, 2016 Jean-Luc paintings are constructed through the processes of creation and destruction, damage and repair. He is influenced by ‘memorial portraiture’ (also known as post mortem photography, which was a popular early 19th century photographic process for immortalizing deceased loved ones). He layers multiple paintings on top of each other before scratching away at the surface to reveal phantasmic faces peering from beneath.
Jean-Luc is obsessed with the materiality and texture of the paint itself. A certain tension exists within the thick surfaces of his paintings, as paint can take precedence over the act of representation. He is obsessed by texture and the transformations that take place when he is no longer a slave to the image and the painting becomes more about the paint and the surface. He see's paint as a vulnerable skin hovering and clinging to the subject, masking its identity but enlivening the image.
