Nicholas Jagger

I paint a lot of self-portraits, though never the same subject twice. Self-perception changes as the weather, so ideas portrayed in the paintings never repeat themselves, yet the work is threaded together because it is about the same body (and life) seen from shifting moods.

I think of my Studies from the Antique as metaphors of the human, particularly in the way they show a relation to time, because they are often visibly damaged, in a way that is difficult to catch in everyday portraiture. In many cases the figures are the only remaining fragments of a larger group, and therefore no longer fulfill a particular function, but are carved or cast in a pose which leaves the figure in a perpetual state of waiting, and all that that implies.

Although I work in three dimensions, I don’t think of it as sculpture, rather as a fleshed-out painting or a number of surfaces which I develop as if a painting. The ideas embodied in the work are fed by, and in turn, feed into, drawing, painting and printmaking.

email: nickjagger
website: nicholasjagger.com