Artist Research - Jake Wood Evans

British artist Jake Wood Evans specialises in re-creating the works of famous painters. Human figures and highly expressionistic and abstract elements can be found in his works. The art of Wood-Evans continues to have a complex and close relationship with European art history. The artists from the Golden Age of British painting, including Sir Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough, Sir Henry Raeburn, and others, had a significant impact on Wood Evans. Scrubbing, scratching, and erasing certain areas while building up others are defining techniques for Wood-Evans paintings. On canvas, saturated oil contrasts with thick layers of paint, frequently exposing the grain. His loose and instinctive use of paint results in a powerful use of light. 

Study for The Triumph of Pan 2, after Poussin, 2019

The 2019 painting is a study for Poussin's The Triumph of Pan 2. It displays a copy of a Leon Kossoff painting. In the original artwork, a number of human bodies are seen combining with other elements like earth, rocks, and vegetation to form one new element. The Wood-Evans' conception of this piece is similar because he highlighted the foreground objects by sharply contrasting them with the background. Wood-Evans reworks the image while making this piece, using techniques like cropping, erasure, and overpainting.

Jake Wood Evans recreated the painting "NAPOLEON CROSSING THE ALPS, AFTER JACQUES-LOUIS DAVID" in 2022, and it quickly rose to the top of the collector's list. He employed many of his signature techniques in the creation of this piece. He created a sense of depth in his painting by adding several layers. Additionally, Wood-Evans' paintings exhibited a particular expressive brushwork style, which gave this painting a sense of movement and dynamic. The colour scheme is very similar to the original. However, he was able to achieve a darker and more intriguing conception by using red tones, which may give the audience a sense of mystery.

The works on display were created using a variety of methods and styles. We might discover differences, though, that are unique to Jake Wood-Evans' expressionistic style. His use of colour and bold outlines is distinctive in all of his works, including those mentioned above. While maintaining the same colour scheme, the background of NAPOLEON CROSSING THE ALPS has been made darker and more depressing than the original. The replica painting uses a dark colour scheme with varying shades of red and brown. These pieces were created by the artist using a variety of techniques to achieve specific textures or shades. Heavy, bold outlines and expressive brushwork are a recurring theme in these pieces, which made the artwork of this artist very straightforward and clear visually for the audience presenting the painting in.

The works created by Jake Wood Evans are very influential on my final 2D outcome. Creating the outcomes, I have improved my work with some of his techniques and style, making the bold outlines of the characters and the objects. Significantly, the painting of Napoleon inspired me to use a specific colour palette presenting the characters in my work on a red background making the work more disturbing.

Subjection and discipline: Jake-Wood-Evans (no date) jake. Available at: https://www.jakewoodevans.com/subjection-and-discipline (Accessed: May 1, 2023).

Biography (no date) jake. Available at: https://www.jakewoodevans.com/biography (Accessed: May 1, 2023).

Jake Wood-Evans (2023) Unit London. Available at: https://unitlondon.com/artists/jake-wood-evans/?utm_medium=ppc&utm_term=jake+wood+evans&utm_source=adwords&utm_campaign=Artists&hsa_cam=9545104709&hsa_kw=jake+wood+evans&hsa_ver=3&hsa_tgt=kwd-904428138145&hsa_src=g&hsa_acc=1486593544&hsa_grp=98881304878&hsa_net=adwords&hsa_mt=e&hsa_ad=605450589816&gclid=CjwKCAjwxr2iBhBJEiwAdXECw0VEB9C7-Ah9znCiwwIKSIc95Jb53veimEWScJ-o1AAnS-9UR9CSuhoCm4oQAvD_BwE (Accessed: May 1, 2023).

(No date) Past centuries with a Bohemian and classical perspective by Jake Wood-Evans. Available at: https://www.photographize.co/articles/jakewoodevans/ (Accessed: 02 May 2023).