JAMES NARES
(English, born 1953)
Half the Time, 2003
Oil on linen
108 x 53” (274.3 x 134.6 cm.)
Sarah Norton Goodyear Fund, 2004

The long sinuous brush stroke that is both the subject and the medium of James Nares’ painting, Half the Time, was created in a single, unpremeditated gesture that is at once spontaneous and precise. Working with large, long-handled brushes that he makes himself, Nares paints on carefully primed canvases placed horizontally on a table or tacked to the floor. His process is a painstaking one of trial and error, often requiring as many as a hundred or more attempts before arriving at a final image. Nares uses a squeegee to remove wet paint and to wipe away unsuccessful gestures, as he works to vary the rhythm and speed of his brush to produce the perfect stoke. The final image, set against a brilliant white ground, results with a vibrant, almost photographic quality to it.

Born in London in 1953, James Nares attended Chelsea Art School (1972-1973) before moving to New York City in 1974 where he attended the School of Visual Arts (1974-1976). In his early years in the United States, Nares’ creative endeavors included music (electric guitar and percussion) and filmmaking before he turned his full attention to visual art in the early 1980s. Nares’ paintings and the process he uses to make them embody a kind of paradox of spontaneity and control. While his work harks back to the 1950s New York School of action painting, with its emphasis on gesture and emotion, it also evokes the more “calculated” Pop art brushstrokes of Roy Lichtenstein. Nares’ paintings are elegantly calligraphic; yet, at the same time, they exude a kind of cartoon zaniness. As a contemporary update of the Modernist brushstroke, Nares’s direct engagement with paint and the process of painting continues this legacy through images that are ultimately about paint, color, gesture, and surface.

- Jennifer Bayles, Educator for Special Projects