JAMES NARES - Studio Science and the Hand as Action and Artifact

Sep 29, 2026

Uploaded by Himbo

The text presents a critical portrait of artist James Nares, framing his work as a force of nature where intense calm and sublime possibility emerge from restless dynamics. It emphasizes the gesture of the hand as both action and artifact, exploring how scale, brushwork, and proportion transform a stroke into an isolated, nearly photographic presence. It connects his single-stroke practice to a deeper human compulsion for marks, linking primal inscription to culture, transcendence, and the mystery of being itself.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryLiterature

FormatPDF

Pages40

Reading Time1 h 2 min

AccessFree to download

JAMES NARESINTERFEREN CES

JAMES NARES'

Scale, gesture, and artistic process

Mark-making, culture, and the sublime

New York and Punk influences

# JAMES NARESINTERFEREN CES JAMES NARESINTE RFEREN CES A rider of storms,James Nares'art resides forever in the eye ofthe tempest.A place of intense calm charged with possibility,it is where the contemplative gaze gives measure in its stillnessto the dynamics of perpetual movement.In Nares'paintings,the line -so unduly tamed and domesticated by the art ofrepresentation-is back to its feral,urgent imperative. It is not the province of some nature morte here.It is a forceof nature.Less a rendering than the visual embodiment of itssublime mathematics,it is the bare surrogate suggestionof an infinity -not a location in itself but rather the fluidcommute from one place to another.Somewhere ineffable andirrational,perhaps where the gesture conjures the instinct andits own self-awareness,his craft marries the hand to canvas.It is at once an absolute and a temporary negotiation.Perhapsit is when the stasis of fine art reaches out for that othernessso vast,it lies beyond the parameters of space and time.Is it any wonder then that as much as it may implicatebeauty,Nares’work is so often about that somewhatmore terrifying aesthetic zone we know as the sublime? # JAMES NARES' Nares began his ongoing investigation of the artist's hand asboth action and artifact in 1991,with his first single strokepaintings.To say that now he has the gesture down with suchelegance that it is both a verb and a noun is not nearly sufficient.What he has mastered and perfected with consummate skillis almost like the trick he uses to open a long irresistibly shutdoor.As impressive as t is,to dwell on it for too long wouldbe tantamount to complimenting an actor for ably memorizinghis lines.Like the man himself,his art is so well spoken andunderstated that it is temptingly wrong to confuse the modestyof the language with the emotive potency of what it expresses.Because there is a wow-effect however,let us at least briefly getto a bit of the studio science that goes into his creative alchemy. Scale is the most immediate dislocation the viewer will noticebetween the event and its manifestation in Nares'art.Theintimacy of the brush stroke,usually a smaller mark often meantto be nearly invisible as it works in consort with others,is at onceisolated and writ larger than life here.Solitary and unmitigated,it represents nothing other than itself.It is the map that charts that path from the mind to its materialization,the deed andthe signal,the act as its own rendering.He accomplishesthis feat by most modest of means -inventing a brush(orrather a veritable arsenal of brushes)of such proportions that itdominates the pictorial surface to the uncompromising exclusionof all other elements.It is then both the mega and the meta-tool.And then to this delirious amping-up of proportion,the strokeis rendered with such articulate resolution that it appearsnearly as photographic as it does painterly.In all,it nudges ourpost-modern skepticism of its inherent authenticity by invokingthe action as if in reproduction.And yes,the way these stunningeffects affect the mind's eye could be termed something ofa trick,but ever the master-conjurer,James Nares is never somuch interested in posing the riddle of 'how did he do that'thaninvoking the deeper mystery of being itself. Humankind is a species of mark-makers;we ratify and reifyour existence by virtue of the marks we make.From the prehistoryof cave paintings whose purpose remains as mysterious to usas any human act,and the broader magical-topography of MASTERSTROKE petroglyphs,through the long evolution of graffiti(perhaps ourlongest surviving early art form),up to those proverbial moneyshots we all love,like our first footprint on the moon,we're neverquite certain we were ever there,or even ever were,unless weleave some sort of mark behind.Considering how ancient thispractice is for us,we must also consider that it is so hard-wiredinto our consciousness that perhaps even its very impulse isendemic to the very birth of con

FAQs

How does the text describe the relationship between stillness and movement in Nares’ work?

It portrays his images as moments of intense calm charged with possibility, where the contemplative gaze measures the dynamics of perpetual movement.

What role does the artist’s hand and the single stroke play?

The hand is treated as both action and artifact; the stroke is presented as an autonomous event that maps the path from mind to materialization.

Why does the text connect Nares’ mark-making to wider human history?

It argues that humans ratify existence through marks, tracing this impulse from cave paintings and petroglyphs to graffiti and iconic traces, making Nares’ work a continuation of primal, culture-shaping inscription.

Sep 29, 2026

Uploaded by Himbo