Jakob Christmas

Region: West

The paintings are small and simple, which I like because this leaves me nowhere to hide; take away a single element and they become coloring book art, or add a detail and they become crowded and overly complicated. To me, this makes even the simplest painting vastly complex. It doesn’t matter if the paintings are abstract or figurative, only that I am fully engaged in the moment as I winnow them down to their essential components.

I think their power lies in their transparency and honesty, and that their strangeness comes naturally from a subjective conviction on my part. At their best, my paintings are both straightforward and mysterious, obvious yet suffused with ambiguity. They are sophisticated and elementary, precise and slightly dumb.

Appearances