Melanie Vandenbrouck, chief curator at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester, chooses a Jadé Fadojutimi image.
Melanie Vandenbrouck on her choice, ‘The Woven Warped Garden of Ponder‘ by Jadé Fadojutimi
‘I love the exuberance of colours, expressive brushstrokes and animated textures of Jadé Fadojutimi’s work. Each of her canvases carries such life, depth and poetic resonance, her visual language mirrored by her evocative word-smithing.
‘They are open, too: to interpretation and emotional response, changing depending on the light, the day’s mood, a soundtrack.
‘I could lose myself in this piece, with its luscious greens and liquid blues punctuated by delicious reds, pinks and oranges. The artist alternates skin-like, translucent layers of paint with generous, concentrated build-ups of matter — true to the contrasting qualities of acrylic and oil.’
Melanie Vandenbrouck is the chief curator at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester, West Sussex. ‘John Craxton: A Modern Odyssey’ at Pallant House Gallery, until 21 April 2024.
Charlotte Mullins comments on ‘The Woven Warped Garden of Ponder’
Looking at Jadé Fadojutimi’s The Woven Warped Garden of Ponder is an embodied experience. This is partly because it is huge — nearly 10ft wide — and partly because the artist puts her heart and soul into each work. In this painting, scarlet, lemon, turquoise and pink leaves and petals seem to dance across the surface and a shape that could be a figure reclines in the grass under what could be a large tropical leaf.
There is always a specific memory or experience behind each of Miss Fadojutimi’s paintings, but the resulting work is often abstract, an assured display of colour and form that nevertheless has an intense emotional charge. She is synaesthetic and colour drives her work.
The biggest inspiration for her paintings is Japanese anime. She is a British woman of Nigerian heritage and some people initially questioned why she was drawing on another nation’s culture for her work, but, in childhood, her emotional sensitivity led to periods of depression and it was anime, in particular Sailor Moon, that helped her navigate life.
Since graduating from the Royal College of Art with a Masters degree six years ago, her powerful paintings have catapulted her to stardom. Her paintings have been acquired by institutions worldwide including Tate in the UK and, in the US, the Met and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. She is represented globally by Gagosian, Galerie Gisela Capitain and Taka Ishii Gallery.
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