pjcox

 The monikers pjc and pjcox are (agreeably, to the artist) ungendered and an attempt to divert attention away from themself and onto their work. pjcox was, and occasionally still is, a botanical and entomological illustrator, but, feeling constrained, was sucked into the quaking bog of constant experimentation.

Having spent numerous hours as a child in the Natural History Museum and Galleries of London pjcox remembers being encouraged by an aunt into believing that life as an artist was possible. Completely self taught, their early illustrative work was accurate and precise depictions of nature that evolved over the decades to structured, abstract watercolours, to a creative expression of the human experience through the explosive use of colour on a static surface.

One usually thinks of two dimensional paintings as non-kinetic or inert, but, pjcox manages to imbue the surface of each painting with movement and motility. It is impossible to see their paintings in the same way twice.

“I'm perennially asked what things 'mean'. Personal meaning, harvested by another, would please me, but viewers often truffle after meaning and having 'cracked it' to their satisfaction that's it. Curtains. The mystical union of opposites or some such trope. For myself I see no codes. It is painting's silence which attracts me. I hope there is some of that fusion of accident and intent which makes any artwork 'sing', and which derives from the attempt to concentrate one-pointedly, without language- which can take hours to banish.”