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Lot Essay
With its sparks, flurries and ribbons of colour tangling in a space of clear sunlit yellow, She’s Distressed (2019) is a radiant example of Jadé Fadojutimi’s abstract practice. Slender, marbled strokes, glowing through a spectrum of complementary purple and golden tones, weave and dance around the picture’s luminous core, while elongated shapes—speckled like cells under a microscope—float weightlessly in the foreground. The work captures the distinctly personal language that has propelled Fadojutimi to international acclaim in recent years. Experiencing moods as colours, she has described her works as ‘windows to the self’ and ‘emotive environments,’ building them up in glowing, translucent layers that interface with her own feelings, memories and experiences. Her intuitive, organic process can be richly felt in the present work, whose forms seem to grow, branch and flutter by their own volition.
Born in London, Fadojutimi studied at the Slade School of Art and the Royal College of Art, graduating with an MA in 2017. Her star has since risen rapidly: she became the youngest artist to join the Tate’s collection in 2021, and held a major solo museum show at the Hepworth Wakefield, Liverpool, the year after. While her paintings are full of life and energy, her process is quiet and introspective. She loved colour as a child, and grew up fascinated by fashion, anime, and video games. Not schooled in conventional art history, she learned to understand tone, space, and pattern in her own way. In her studio, Fadojutimi recreates aspects of her childhood bedroom, surrounded by clothes, old toys, and her writings. She often works late into the night, listening to her deepest thoughts and emotions, and letting them guide her hand. ‘It becomes a force that just takes over,’ she says. ‘I always want to call it witchcraft’ (J. Fadojutimi, quoted in A. Needham, ‘Jadé Fadojutimi, art’s hottest property’, The Guardian, 7 September 2022).
During her time at art school Fadojutimi came to admire other artists, ranging from Joan Mitchell, Claude Monet, Lee Krasner and Henri Matisse to contemporary painters including Phoebe Unwin, Laura Owens and Amy Sillman. Many of these figures share something of her synaesthetic approach to the canvas, with sound, touch, speed and other phenomena informing their handling of pigment. ‘Whilst I’m painting, the harmonious unity of my senses becomes apparent’, she says. ‘They muddle together, chitter-chattering about their newfound warmth as though it’s their first connection. This first meeting seems to happen almost every day’ (J. Fadojutimi quoted in Jadé Fadojutimi: Jesture, exh. cat. Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London 2020, p. 5). Fadojutimi writes in parallel with her painting, and her works’ oblique, poetic titles reflect their sense of play, experimentation and flux. If She’s Distressed alludes to any emotive turmoil in its excited upheaval of forms, it is also many things at once: an ever-changing inner landscape expressed through her miraculous, self-defining language of colour.
Born in London, Fadojutimi studied at the Slade School of Art and the Royal College of Art, graduating with an MA in 2017. Her star has since risen rapidly: she became the youngest artist to join the Tate’s collection in 2021, and held a major solo museum show at the Hepworth Wakefield, Liverpool, the year after. While her paintings are full of life and energy, her process is quiet and introspective. She loved colour as a child, and grew up fascinated by fashion, anime, and video games. Not schooled in conventional art history, she learned to understand tone, space, and pattern in her own way. In her studio, Fadojutimi recreates aspects of her childhood bedroom, surrounded by clothes, old toys, and her writings. She often works late into the night, listening to her deepest thoughts and emotions, and letting them guide her hand. ‘It becomes a force that just takes over,’ she says. ‘I always want to call it witchcraft’ (J. Fadojutimi, quoted in A. Needham, ‘Jadé Fadojutimi, art’s hottest property’, The Guardian, 7 September 2022).
During her time at art school Fadojutimi came to admire other artists, ranging from Joan Mitchell, Claude Monet, Lee Krasner and Henri Matisse to contemporary painters including Phoebe Unwin, Laura Owens and Amy Sillman. Many of these figures share something of her synaesthetic approach to the canvas, with sound, touch, speed and other phenomena informing their handling of pigment. ‘Whilst I’m painting, the harmonious unity of my senses becomes apparent’, she says. ‘They muddle together, chitter-chattering about their newfound warmth as though it’s their first connection. This first meeting seems to happen almost every day’ (J. Fadojutimi quoted in Jadé Fadojutimi: Jesture, exh. cat. Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London 2020, p. 5). Fadojutimi writes in parallel with her painting, and her works’ oblique, poetic titles reflect their sense of play, experimentation and flux. If She’s Distressed alludes to any emotive turmoil in its excited upheaval of forms, it is also many things at once: an ever-changing inner landscape expressed through her miraculous, self-defining language of colour.