Jesse Richards- The Inescapable Mark

I make art to find the authentic presence in what society has discarded. In the forthcoming Heads 2 series, and specifically in the images of the Pierrot, the face becomes a site where biological struggle and transformation intersect. My work is a record of a body in constant negotiation. From the lifelong reality of spina bifida to the hand tremors following a stroke, these traces are weaponized as the technical surface of my practice. I use heavy oil pastels and paint sticks because they demand a physical resistance that mirrors the effort of the body to exist on the page.

I learned from many voices, some directly and some by study. From Francis Bacon, I carry the understanding of space as an enclosure for the expression of frailty in the human body. From Egon Schiele comes the raw erotic signal, flattened and unfettered by dimension. My palette is taken from a lineage of Symbolism and Expressionism, including the interiority of Munch and Redon and the devotional weight of Georges Rouault. Like Jawlensky or Schoenberg in The Red Gaze, I treat color as a vibration and a physical confrontation where meaning is rendered through emotion and instinct.

This commitment to the visceral is the foundation of a twenty-year trajectory. As a foundational voice in Stuckism and Remodernist Film, and through my work with the Cine Foundation International, I have sought to reposition the role of interpretation in art. Analysis alone is insufficient when confronted with the interaction between the heart and the technical surface, a concept rooted in the thesis of Maya Deren.

My films and photographs function as visual liturgies. I apply Jean Rollin’s principle of the sanctified landscape to the human form, treating the vulnerable body as a cathedral. This lens was sharpened through a collaborative understanding of the inescapable mud, a wisdom shared by Béla Tarr during our work through CFI. He taught me that the rain, the wind, and the grinding endurance of the body are simply what time does to people. This refusal to look away informs my approach to both the surface of a painting and the figures in my lens.

Primal Expressionism is not a style. Not a movement.
I am a body that refuses to be quiet. It is tremors and scars. It is the unfolding of meaning over time and the only way I know to preserve what is otherwise left unseen.