The Telegraph Gallery's main exhibition space is currently dedicated to contemporary British painting. This is represented here by the exhibition New Positions in British Painting, which features paintings by five contemporary British painters. One of them is Jessie Makinson, whose work is represented in the exhibition by three large-scale paintings: Hisses and Kisses, Feathers First and Another Rascal Comes. Each of these paintings is based on a figural composition, with a different number of figures depicted in each. The largest of these, a painting titled Hisses and Kisses, consists of a rich figural composition made up of a total of twelve figures situated around a table. The other two paintings are quite different from each other in terms of colour and painting style. While the painting Feathers First is mainly in blue combined with yellow and green, the painting Another Rascal Comes is composed mainly of light shades of yellow, white and purple, but also brown. In the second painting mentioned, we can see several figures, two of which have, very uncharacteristically, a horse's tail.
Although figurative motifs appear in the work of other artists represented in the exhibition, Jessie Makinson approaches the figures on her canvases in a very different way. Her figures, especially those of women, have an almost otherworldly feel to a large extent. The surface of their bodies is often covered with various stripes, spots or scales, and there are usually plant elements in the form of leaves or twigs. Another important element of Jessie Makinson's work is her work with nudity. The artist depicts almost all of her figures completely nude, or accompanied only by simple forms of clothing. Makinson treats the bodies of her characters as a distinctive painting surface and varies and conceives them in different ways.
Jessie Makinson has participated in several exhibitions throughout her career as an artist, not only in the UK (such as the London exhibitions Year one (2018) at Frestonian Gallery and Hyper Mesh (2019) at Assembly Point), but also in the United States, where she was featured in 2018 with Stuart Lorimer at New York's Lyles & King Gallery, or in the same year in the exhibition BioPeversity at Nicodim Gallery in Los Angeles. There have also been exhibitions in Mexico and Switzerland (here often at Zurich's Fabian Lang Gallery - for example, in 2019, an exhibition entitled The Self, the Work, the World). The three aforementioned paintings by the artist can currently be seen at the Telegraph Gallery in the exhibition New Positions in British Painting. Together with paintings by Justin Mortimer, David Brian Smith, Tom Anholt and Caroline Walker, they will be on display there until 23 November.
By Jan Malý / Telegraph Gallery
