Haunting melancholy

As a former winner of Britain’s most prestigious award for painters, the John Moores prize (other winners include Hamilton, Hilton, Hockney, Hoyland), a new show by Andrzej Jackowski should not be missed, especially not these notably small but powerful paintings in his latest exhibition at Purdy Hicks.

The phrase ‘depth charge’ is used in the catalogue to describe their effect, in the sense that their force is densely contained and profound. It is certainly what Jackowski aspires to achieve. In his inaugural lecture as Professor of Painting at Brighton University in 2003, he said, ‘Seamus Heaney talks about poems and individual words as “depth charges” and the skill of making a poem, as being able to drop a bucket down the well of ourselves, in his phrase “a way to open the skin of the pool of ourselves”. I wanted in my work to drop that bucket farther down the well.