The work: Jacqui Gibbs Chamberlain, Pink Gin Makes you Spin, 2022. Oil on canvas, 120 x 120cm. Courtesy: the artist.
New Zealand-based artist Jacqui Gibbs Chamberlain is not afraid of colour. Describing her approach as “storytelling with layers of paint”, the artist composes psychedelic mindscapes using neon shades which seem set to vibrate off the canvas. In her work Pink Gin Makes you Spin, a figure hangs ten off a male sitter’s shades, both seemingly floating on a dynamic field of yellow strokes and dots. The narrative the piece offers is not necessarily explicit, but is rather up to the mind of the viewer to decipher. Chamberlain intentionally selected a vibrant pink for the central figure, with its associations of sensitivity and vulnerability, speaking to an emotional openness that is echoed in the detailing around his eyes. The cigarette poised languidly between his lips and his relaxed facial expression belie the energy which courses through the piece, with the artist’s rapid paint application clear to see in the frenetic passages of acrylic across his cheeks. By playing with scale and banishing any contextual markers of size, the artist has left us to wonder who the subjects are. Is the smaller figure a reflection of the man’s thoughts, empathetic and open? It seems that the pink-clad man has something – quite literally – on his mind.