"My inclination to paint, especially from life, is a political one and a way of bearing witness and sharing testimony" - Jennifer Packer
Just occasionally you come across the work of an artist whose work stuns you, stopping you dead in your tracks. One such artist I discovered is Jennifer Packer. I came across her wonderful paintings online two years ago, and more recently face-to-face (between lockdowns), on a visit to her first major exhibition in a European institution here in London, at the Serpentine Gallery. Packer is just one of a talented group of black artists whose skills are now being recognised as the art world addresses the historic underrepresentation of Black artists in certain collections and galleries. The range of painterly techniques Packer brings to both her highly personal, intimate, human and flower portraits here are quite dazzling. They conjure up some of the expressionistic marks included in the repertoires of Bacon, Schiele and Saville, but used in Packer's own idiosyncratic contexts. I particularly loved the loose brushwork, and the way in which she draws into the wet paint with the end of a brush to produce negative linework. The range of scale in Packer's work is also key in their engagement. The tiny canvases physically draw the viewer in for an intimate reading, whilst the huge scale of the larger works equally attracts the viewer closer in, the better to see the figure(s) depicted, and the array of techniques employed. Blessed Are Those Who Mourn (Breonna! Breonna!) is one of the largest canvases here and depicts a black man reclining on a sofa cooled by a fan. The heat implied in the image is suggested by the acid yellow of the background paint dripping down the canvas and depicted staircase, as well as the sky outside, shown as an azure rectangle across which a black bird is caught in flight. The painting raises many questions as its title references the scandalous killing of 26 year old African American medical technician Breonna Taylor last year when police, unnannounced, (on the premise of looking for drugs), broke into her apartment and shot her dead in her own bed. No drugs were found. This event was one of a number that gave rise to the Black Lives Matter movement, focusing on the sense of
righteous outrage felt at the continued targeted killing of black men and women by the police. As painful and as powerful as the stories behind certain of these paintings are, Packer's skills in referring to and depicting them in paint helps to give them more a little more publicity, making their stories perhaps more palatable to certain eyes, though nonetheless painful to the black families who have lost their loved ones. One senses Packer's total empathy with the victims in her imagery, and her use of the paint medium as a highly personal way of coping with such flagrant and violent transgressions against others of her sex and race. One can only dare to dream that such artistic statements may in some way be catalysts for accountability and change. The flower paintings of Packer are also very interesting. I may have implied above that Packer's flower paintings are as much portraits as those with human subject matter. This is suggested by Packer herself giving them titles such as "Breathing Room, Flowers for Frank Bramblett", (an African American artist), and "Say Her Name", implicitly suggestive of that other notorious death in police custody of African-American Sandra Bland. The ways in which the flower paintings are executed appears to give them a liveliness and energy as befitting animate things. This is in a way which is different to the more deliberately static, composed, though equally accomplished floral arrangements found in 17th C. Dutch flower paintings, or those of renowned flower painter Henri Fantin-Latour. Packer's oeuvre, and the works displayed here are awe-inspiring. My photographs of the paintings do not really do them justice. Their nuances and painterly qualities have to be experienced first-hand to be fully appreciated. This powerful exhibition demands a repeat visit, and another viewing once the current pandemic restrictions are lifted and Serpentine gallery doors are allowed to open again. I'm hoping the run will be extended to make up for the lockdown.
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