James Mortimer’s Stirring Paintings Play With Depth

With a distinct, fluctuating sense of depth, James Mortimer‘s mixed-media paintings move between the fanciful and the unsettling. Some of his more packed scenes recall the enormous, Biblical paintings of Bosch, with a penchant for both delight and grimness. The work often is rendered in oils, yet the artist also mixes in acrylics and watercolor.

“Whilst seemingly simple, there is wealth of drama playing out behind the scenes,” a recent statement says. “Visual puns and innuendoes pepper his paintings like Freudian slips of the brush. Every fruit and every plant is pregnant with suggestion. Exoticism and the thrill of travel also permeate every scene, like Victorian Boy’s Own adventures that have turned slightly spicy and risqué. And underneath it all, there is a simmering sexuality. These characters are vain, vice-loving and beautiful; they are what the gaze what meant for.”

See more of Mortimer’s work below.