Jemma Lucas

Defective stain. More often then not the stain is accidental and unwanted. The conventional aspiration for perfect and immaculate exteriors means we routinely adhere to removing sullied stains; the habitual residue left on our clothes or the enamel of our teeth. In spite of this, it is the un-penetrable nature of the stain that is contingent to the production of the paintings.

Lucas relies on the self- intuitive nature of the materials; heavily diluted acrylic medium seeps into the absorbent porous fabric, leaving behind its own autographic trace. Daz detergent is added to the diluted acrylic paint, this modest, household product paradoxically improves and removes the stain; the enzymes break down the acrylic paint accelerating its absorbent nature to penetrate the fibers of polyester cotton fabric, yet at the same time, can be used conventionally to wash out unsatisfactory pigments as the artist asserts her own control over the medium.

With regard to the history of color field painting the work retains the autonomy of modernist painting in its scale and structure. Comparable to the aesthetic of Morris Louis’ Veil series and Frankenthaler’s Mountains and Sea, 1952, unlike these abstract landscape painters, Lucas’ interest lies in non-objective picture making. The work sits uncomfortably under the banner of abstraction, although the aesthetic of the work is quintessentially abstract, it is the actuality and realism of the stain and crease that query the common conception that abstraction implies non-representation.

The artist momentarily elevates the aesthetic of the stain in vibrant hues that culminate in a mass of residue which harbor the typically lurid stain uniting artifice and reality. Simplistically grounded in process, the paintings are evidence of a continuous and unresolved struggle between the artists’s own intuition and the self-intuitive nature of the materials. 

The titles of work are subsequent to completion of the work and verbally articulate the physical behavior of the materials: you don’t have to know where you’re going to get there or half way to paradise. Lucas often uses the metaphor of a vehicle in motion: Hit and Run, Crash and Cruisin’ A Long verbalize the stains travelling harmoniously in unison across the surface hitting an abrupt mass of residue. The realism that these titles illicit refer back to the content of the work grounded in actuality: the tangible stain and authentic crease.