Jessica Warboys
Sea Painting, 2014 Pigment and canvas126,4 × 122,6 × 5,7 cm
About the work
For her Sea Paintings, Jessica Warboys applies pigment to a large canvas before placing it in the sea. Currents, sand, sunlight and wind become active participants in the painting process. Water carries colour across the surface, sand brushes against the fabric, and sun and wind influence how it dries. Each location and moment produces a different, unpredictable result.
The physical act of making is central to these works. Each canvas records a particular encounter between materials, natural forces and time. Warboys keeps her intervention in the composition to a minimum, allowing herself to be surprised by what emerges. The painting becomes a direct trace of the sea’s activity, with the sea acting as subject, material and collaborator.
Created outside the studio, the Sea Paintings retain this sense of openness when displayed. The canvases are left unstretched and hung loosely against the wall. For Warboys, this allows them to remain open and changeable: traces of an unfolding process rather than fixed, finished compositions.
Jessica Warboys
Born in Wales in 1977, Jessica Warboys lives and works in Suffolk and Berlin. She studied at the Slade School of Fine Art and works across painting, sculpture, film and performance.
Her practice draws on personal and collective memories, bringing them into dialogue with historical, mythological and fictional narratives. In her films, she often combines her own writing with an associative approach to editing, allowing images and ideas to connect in unexpected ways.
A similar openness shapes her paintings. Chance, place and circumstance play an essential role, allowing the work to develop beyond the artist’s intentions. Across different media, Warboys creates space for encounters between memory, storytelling, materials and the natural world.
Her work has been presented at the South London Gallery, Villa Arson, Le Magasin and documenta 13.