“Celebrated for his evocation of cities and landscapes, Jake Attree makes solid the airy castles of inspiration in paintings of rare integrity and depth.”
- Andrew Lambirth
Represented by David Messum Fine Art
12 Bury Street, St. James’s, London SW1Y 6AB
phone+44 (0)207 2874448
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Full-colour catalogue with an essay by British art historian, David Boyd Haycock, the exhibition reasserts Attree’s richly tactile sense of abstraction.
These works, united by his signature earthen palette and love of Yorkshire, are nevertheless eclectic, featuring bold brushwork, delicate crosshatching, and almost topographical surfaces that recall textiles, mosaics, and above all, the masterworks of Pieter Brueghel the Elder.
In the Artist’s Studio
This film meets Attree in his Halifax studio, where he takes us on an informal tour of his 2021 exhibition. It then travels to London, where gallerist David Messum discusses his favourite works.
By nature an autodidact, Attree’s knowledge of art’s history and of its wider cultural context is prodigious and scholarly. Consequently his list of touchstones, those artists who inspire and set the standard by which he judges his own practice, is long and surprisingly diverse.
Lynne Green - Curator, editor and writer
So strong is his technique and so confident his use of colour that Attree can take a very simple subject such as a stand of trees on a bank, or figures in the street, and make it sing… Ultimately the very best artists take reference from many sources … adopting others and from this apparent melee carve out their own individual vision. Jake Attree is one of these, and a quite extraordinary one at that.
Brian Sinfield - Gallerist
Attree at work in his Dean Clough studio
A new film by Matt Howarth
As poetry is everywhere for those capable of finding it, so are subjects for paintings. Jake Attree finds both and moulds them into cool calm episodes of deep reflection: paintings which are powerhouses of thought and feeling which will continue to give out energy and inspiration long after the work of more flashy contemporaries has exhausted itself and lost all relevance.
Andrew Lambirth - Writer and art critic