Jesse
Watson

Watson graduated from Auckland University of Technology in 2002 with a Bachelor of Visual Arts majoring in painting. He then spent 2003 in Melbourne producing commission work for Interior Art Australia. After returning to NZ between 2004 and 2007, he departed for Europe where he is currently based in Amsterdam. Watson has been selected as a finalist in the Wallace Art Awards every year from 2006 to 2010 inclusive.

Jesse Watson’s compositions resemble musical arrangements, with multiple layers of graphic elements and gestural marks converging into an eclectic, rhythmic accord. Working simultaneously across a series of canvases, Watson builds layer upon layer of information. Hard edged graphic elements set a formal underlying rhythm around which loose, sometimes percussive brush marks cluster. There is a kind of construction/destruction dichotomy at work here; patterns are broken and images corrode and slip before the viewer’s eyes, evading any cohesive reading.

Watson also places an emphasis on the physical process of painting; patterns of prismatic colour are broken and re-configured, and hints of the figurative lie just behind the picture plane. Brilliant colours are mixed spontaneously, directly upon the canvas so that traces of the painter’s thought process and the evolution of the work remain evident in the finished piece.