We chatted to painter Jake Aikman about the inspiration behind his enigmatic and evocative seascapes, which have transcended the canvas to adorn a building in Ukraine’s capital city.

Why did you start painting water?

When I was at Michaelis School of Fine Art I did a series of photorealistic paintings where water was quite central to the theme. For the project, I asked my dad to climb into Dalebrook Tidal Pool in St James, Cape Town. He looked so vulnerable and it made me think about human vulnerability in water. I also surf, which naturally created an interest in the ocean, particularly as an element you can’t control. Seeing my father in the water, his human frailty, I wanted to evoke this same feeling in a painting without the human figure.

Your paintings have been described as peaceful and also as haunting. How do you get the emotion across? 

I suppose I evoke response through the colour and the movement of the water. I believe the people who say a work is peaceful are at peace when they come to view it; I’m not at peace when I’m making it. People have very strong responses to the work and sometimes it’s negative. It’s speaking to what’s happening inside of them. That’s why I abandoned the figure. I wanted the viewer to engage with that feeling and for me to get something ambiguous and universal across.

You recently returned from Spain. Tell us a bit more about that trip.

I had a solo show in Granada. I spent just over a week there. It’s not a big city and it doesn’t have a vibrant art scene. Tourists go there to visit castles (which were fantastic, by the way). I made a good connection there and have been invited to an art fair in Turin, Italy, which is happening in November.

Did your time at Bracciano Lake in Italy inspire any of your work?

I was there for a month in 2014 participating in a residency in one of the small towns. (There are three towns around the lake.) Bracciano is about 20 km northwest of Rome. I had a studio and started producing some of the paintings I work on now. There are dramatic changes in the weather there. The lake can change drastically, and it can, in turn, change the mood of the people. The locals often spoke to me about how that body of water affected their emotions.

How has surfing inspired your seascapes?

The influence surfing has on my painting is not from when I’m catching waves; it’s when I’m bobbing at the backline, vulnerable and exposed. I try to go to Cape Point Nature Reserve as much as I can and I’ve surfed there alone a few times. This one time, I had otters swim up to me in the line-up, flip onto their backs and smash shellfish on their chests. There are no houses around, no cars. It feels like an atavistic experience. It takes you back. It’s timeless. I try to get this across with my paintings. A figure or architecture in the painting would change that; it would place it.

Tell us about your recent move to Tulbagh.

I have lived in the Cape Town City Bowl for the past 12 years. I was considering moving overseas, but my love for the mountain and the sea kept driving me back here. Going overseas seemed like a good opportunity, yet I wanted to be here. Tulbagh is a good place to reset and make decisions. I’m missing the ocean a lot. I wouldn’t choose to be in Tulbagh long term, I’d choose to be near the sea, so I’m deciding when to move back and to where, but it’s given me good perspective.

You painted an impressive three-story mural in Ukraine’s historic capital city of Kiev. Do you have one planned for Cape Town or South Africa?

I haven’t, but I’m looking into possibilities of doing one and am searching for a suitable wall (it would be relevant considering the Cape Town water crisis). [Jake was invited to the Ukraine by international public art organisation Art United Us, which plans to paint 200 walls around Ukraine.]

What’s next for Jake Aikman?

I have two exhibitions coming up. I’m more than likely going to spend some time on another lake north of Chicago up in Michigan, where a family friend has a cabin on Lake Michigamme. 

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PichiAvo is made up of two intrepid Spanish graffiti artists who have become known for their paintings of Greek gods on chaotic backdrops.

They started working together back in 2007 and have been combining the worlds of classic Greek imagery with street-style mural painting ever since.

Their murals, which can be found throughout the streets of Valencia and wider Spain, make use of unconventional styles and colours, presenting the timelessness of Greek mythology in an original way. They only use spray paint to complete their works, which further emphasises the precision of their technique.

PichiAvo is currently exhibiting in London until 21 September 2017. You can find out more about the exhibition here.

To see more of the duo’s work, visit pichiavo.com.

(h/t) iloboyou.com

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Jonathan Pauwels, also known by his alias Jaune, is a Belgian stencil artist with an eye for the miniature.

He creates quirky works of art within the city of Brussels, carefully stencilling tiny sanitation workers in action onto brick walls, pipes and door frames.

“Despite performing an important public service in garish fluorescent clothing, I observed that [sanitation workers] exist in the background of our urban environment, becoming almost invisible to the average person,” says Jaune about the series in an artist statement on his website.

“It was in 2011 that I decided to free these characters from their roles by symbolically placing them in ever more absurd and whimsical scenarios in and around the city streets,” he says. “Those who were supposed to keep the world tidy have become harbingers of chaos.”

For more images of Jaune’s street-based series, visit art-of-jaune.com.

(h/t) thisiscolossal.com

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