‘Shiva and Kali’ selected for the 2018 Jackson’s Art Prize 

Jackson’s Judging Panel:

‘... ‘Shiva and Kali’ depicted a fantastic, unusual and highly skilled application of paint. Ben Coode-Adams utilized watercolour paints’ transparency, vibrancy, and granulation; despite its flat perspective, this painting’s intelligently layered construction causes forms to shift and change as the eye moves around the work. The simple, very effective repeated line work gives the piece an anatomical, organic feel that suggests concepts of growth, functionality, and connectivity. All of these strong elements are drawn together by the artist’s use of colour and bleeding washes, bold reds are balanced by blocks of earthy brown while neon yellows are neutralized by granulated floods of lilac. This painting is the perfect example of how versatile even the most traditional of art materials can be.’

Ben Coode-Adams makes watercolours which he had previously exhibited periodically, in Berlin in 2004 and Mainz 2006. In 2008 he was shortlisted for the Jerwood Drawing Prize.  But it became a larger part of his practice after 2013 when he fell ill and was unable to make sculpture. In 2016 he was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Watercolour Prize and in 2017 for the Royal Watercolour Society prize which in 2018 he won.  This commitment to painting led to exhibitions with Wayfarers Gallery and Theodore:Art in Brooklyn, New York in 2014 and Galerie dreiZehn in Berlin in 2016/17. In 2018 was selected for Where the Suns Rises the Sino-British Contemporary Art Biennial, Yantai, Shandong, China. In 2019 he showed in 'Made in Britain' The National Museum, Gdansk, Poland.

Ben Coode-Adams's painting involves a quantum delving into the spirit world from which a host of spectral personages flood onto the page. Veils of beautiful colour coalesce and oscillate, spun from the lower world in which lurk truth and beauty.  He brings a damp ancient magical psycho-folk wind to the page, the heady breath of the bosky mire. He mucks around with faeries, sprites and spirits, embracing the pink shiny glittery as well as the massive scary teeth, truly awesome power of death wielding elementals.  It’s not nice in the woods