Interview by Jimon

1. Where do you currently reside and paint?  I currently live in the North West of England, UK – where I paint in my bedroom which doubles as a make-shift studio, despite its tiny size. I also paint at school, where I am making good progress in developing who I am as a creator.

2. At what age did you start painting? And how did it all start?  I’ve always been the kid who has a pencil in his hand, drawing at every opportunity I get – I could never put the pencil down in my early childhood. I suppose the turning point for me was spending time with my grandfather who paints realistically. I could never really understand why he’d want things to look perfect – and so I experimented with watercolours trying to paint realism (to follow in his footsteps) but it never really worked out for me – so I painted how I felt instead.

3. You are still very young, where is all this depth coming from?  I feel privileged to be able to tap into the rawness of human emotion at such a young age, although it is frustrating to see some adult artists who cannot understand the complexity of these emotions. Take happiness for example, most people would think of the colour yellow; whereas I am inundated every time I ponder the existence of happiness – it reverberates deep into my soul and brings these ‘things’ which flow through me and onto the canvas. Often times I feel like a puppet to the entity of what art is – the abstract forms are never decided by myself – it’s more of a primitive, instinctual application of paint with no thought process involved.

4. Do you remember the first piece of art that captured your imagination?  Yes, in primary school. We were all shown a picture of Edvard Munch’s ‘The Scream’, which scared the hell out of me. I wanted to know what was so terrifying about the piece, and what caused the figure to have such an intense reaction. But at the same time, I thought it was beautiful – the raw portrayal of fear, anguish and panic had been humanised! And yet so much more beauty was thrown into the piece, the formlessness of the background and how it flows through the foreground – the composition – everything, I was encapsulated by it. Of course, as a child, I also used to despise artists such as Joan Miro for their (what I thought then) un-earned fame, but now that I have matured and understand the complexity of human emotion – as well as how difficult it is to put this onto canvas, I have a new appreciation for works of art that I once thought were terrible – such as Joan Miro’s; “Peinture”.

5. One word to describe Kai Jackson?  Tsundere.

6. Are you trying to send a message through your art or is it purely for inspiration?  I think, through my art, I am trying to show people what we all are under the surface. Without expressions, voices or physical bodies – I want the world to see what we as human beings are, and how our emotions and responses to situations show themselves. I’m trying to allow people to tap into their own emotions and hopefully provide them with the push they need to give in to the universe and hopefully allow it to express their emotions through them without thought.

7. What makes you decide a painting is finished?  I don’t think I have ever finished a painting in my life. Each time I look at them, there is always different compositions, refinements, colours, textures or marks I could add or remove. Though, I don’t think it wise to make these adjustments as whatever it was which painted through me stopped at this point in time for a reason – and so I feel it is best to leave it be, but at other times I will find that I have whited-out old compositions of paintings and paint directly over the top.

8. How do you choose the colours in your paintings?  As a rule of thumb, I tend not to choose a colour palette before I start painting – instead as the painting develops, I allow it to show me what colours it needs to express itself to me. As I am colour-blind, I find it difficult to mix the same tones of colours, because of this, the responses I get about use of colour are alien to me since several variations of the same colour may have been used throughout a piece – yet I only see the single variation I have made (or thought I had made).

9. What kind of art hangs on the walls of your home?  There is currently an abstract piece hanging above the fireplace which reflects the colours in the room – though most of the earlier work I have made and the drawings and sketches I make before painting are plastered along the walls of my room. Not only does this allow me to get inspiration from various pieces, it also covers the boring colour of the wall!

10. What influences you as an artist?  The human condition is what influences me the most. The fact that we are biologically a self-preserving species, yet we care so deeply about our families, our possessions, our pets – it is these emotions that attract me to bring brush to canvas – the humanness of experiencing emotion.

11. How do you see Kai Jackson in 20 years?  I’d love to say rich and famous with big expensive houses and lots of famous artwork on the walls – but that wouldn’t be true to myself. Sure, I would love to make money from my art, wouldn’t we all, but I truly wish to continue painting throughout my life, no matter what the circumstances are. There is something about the way pushing paint into the fibres of canvas or paper with your bare hands does to you, it is a better feeling than what money or fame will bring to a person. Of course, we all have our demons and I am no exception; I just hope that they aren’t as prominent or play a role in the creation of my work in the years to come. My goal, my ultimate goal, is to have one single painting hanging on the wall of the Saatchi Art Gallery or the Museum of Modern Art.

12. Do you listen to music whilst creating, if so what genre?  I tend not to listen to music as much as it distracts me from the introspection required to channel my art – though I did go through a phase of listening to Clair de Lune’s; Debussy for a while as it was the closest thing that compared to the experience of painting, to me anyway.

13. If you could have dinner with three artists living or dead, who would be at your table?  Definitely Van Gogh would have to be one of them – I imagine he would be such an interesting character to talk to, to question and to understand. Another would be Yayoi Kusama given her experience in the art world; I would love to talk about her obsessions with circles first hand and to appreciate her mind. Finally, I would invite Piero Manzoni purely to ask whether his work “Artists Shit” contains real human excrements or not – but this would certainly not be discussed over dinner!

14. Three things you can’t live without in your studio?  All my materials and paints at hand, the quietness that sometimes escapes during the afternoon, and my cats – who wander in and sometimes decide to do a little painting of their own.

15. Do you have a place/person or thing that you visit for inspiration?  Sometimes during sleep, I will awake feeling an urge to paint, but usually I retreat into the depths of my mind after pondering questions or replaying memories over and over. Other times, I flick through my old work to jolt my creative conscience. Other times I don’t paint at all because there is no puppeteer to use me.

16. Anything else you’d like to mention?  Yes, I think it’s important that readers find new artists to look at – some upcoming individuals that spark interest within you. Even in the form of a compliment on a social media post, or a personal message telling them that you like their work is a great deal. It helps us by keeping us engaged and encouraged to pursue art. I’m sure we’d all get bored looking at Picasso paintings or Giacometti sculptures forever, so it is up to the audience and the artists to engage with one another and to reach out to one another to allow new artists to emerge all over the world. Who knows, maybe I will make it big one day.