James Vaulkhard | The Sublime and The Consumed, An American Pastoral: Gallery Exhibition | 7 Piccadilly Arcade
Past exhibition
Overview
“James Vaulkhard’s painting evinces the grandeurs of the American landscape echoing the depictions of the past. But in contrast to the black and white palette of say Ansel Adams, here the terrain is imbibed with intense colour and hue speaking of a vibrant world alive to our subjectivity but not consumed by it - seeking instead to turn us from malign introspection to engagement with the real itself.”- Phillip Blond
James Vaulkhard’s practice merges classical precision with contemporary abstraction, creating a dynamic interplay between figuration and fragmentation. His compositions, rich in bold hues and intricate textures, explore themes of memory, mythology, and perception’s fleeting nature. Born in Kenya and trained at Charles H. Cecil Studios and Studio Della Statua in Florence, his work echoes with historical resonance while remaining firmly rooted in the present. His foundation in Renaissance traditions is evident in his meticulous attention to form, balance, and composition, yet his approach is anything but conventional. Rather than adhering to classical structures, he dismantles and reimagines them, melding figuration with gestural abstraction, rich textures, and an expressive, layered colour palette.
In October 2024, Vaulkhard undertook a 5,000-mile journey across the American landscape, retracing the Hudson River School painters’ footsteps and revisiting the ideals of the American Sublime. This exhibition presents the visual and conceptual evolution of that experience, questioning the shifting meaning of the sublime in an age of mass tourism, environmental reckoning, and political uncertainty. The journey unfolded at a moment of heightened tension, when the nation stood at a crossroads, grappling with its past, its identity, and the weight of its future. Just as the 19th-century painters glorified an untouched wilderness as a symbol of promise and potential, today’s landscape reveals a more complicated narrative, one shaped by ambition, exploitation, and nostalgia for a lost world.
Light and dark serve as symbolic forces in his work; golden hues evoke the sublime’s awe-inspiring grandeur, while deep tonal shifts hint at human impact and uneasy tension. Vibrant colour fields create a mythic connection to nature, yet fragmented forms and obscured details suggest a landscape in flux. Blending traditional and experimental techniques, Vaulkhard redefines the aesthetics of the sublime, portraying nature not as a boundless exceeding potential but as a fragile monument threatened by human intervention and yet only fully recognized in its glory by human vision.
Installation Views
