Jacqui Colley’s new works thrum with delicious tension. The brainwave frequencies of the exhibition title relate to specific emotional states and these paintings capture Colley’s internal life as it shifts throughout the painting process. Described by the artist as self-reflective responses to her state of mind in the studio, the placement and manipulation of paint on the canvas are physical manifestations of intangible experiences. Our own neural pathways light up in turn, creating a reciprocal loop between our own experiences and those of the painter.

Colley’s painting process is intuitive, underpinned by techniques honed over years. The immediacy of her mark-making retains the movement of the media she uses. Painting wet-on-wet introduces elements of (managed) chance into the work, stains drip down the surface, and broad swathes of paint nudge the bounds of the stretched canvases. Deliberately concealed areas retain traces of underlying textures and colours, hinting at a painted palimpsest.

In Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Theta #4 internal frameworks that rise out of cloudy blue brushwork that wraps around their lower reaches. They lean back at irregular angles like rusty scaffolding constructed from discrete instances of the artist’s intuition and physical expression. Visual and conceptual moments of disruption are hidden in plain sight; like radiowave static, they alternately distort and re-form our reception of the work. The paint surfaces are likewise interrupted and re-worked, their physical structure underscoring (sometimes literally) the conceptual composition.

Colour is integral to Colley’s composition and guides our seeing experience. De-saturated, muted hues in varying density and porosity are the foundations of the paintings. Their robust materiality underscores the muscularity of the artist’s mark-making as she pushes and pulls paint across the surface. We see this in the way the laddered dark strokes at the bottom of Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Theta #2 draw us up and into the work, where bright green elements are the next signposts for our eyes to follow. Manipulating the recessive and projecting qualities of each colour, Colley alternately creates and interrupts our ways of looking and experiencing her
works.

The scale and complexity of Jacqui Colley’s large canvases are beautifully complemented by her small works on paper. These pared-back pieces might first register as glyphs or symbols, but they stand outside meaning, rather than containing it. As with Colley’s paintings, our understanding of them is a work in progress, changing as we do.

Lisa Wilkie