Artist Statement

James Topple is a multidisciplinary artist working across painting, printmaking, and live art. A graduate of the University of Plymouth (2008), he has exhibited widely in the UK and South Korea, where he lived and worked for five years. His practice is informed by both Western and Eastern traditions, particularly Asian ink wash painting, with an emphasis on capturing essence over literal representation. His paintings balance instinctive, chance-driven gestures with moments of control, foregrounding surface, texture, and what he describes as a “colourfully dirty” materiality. Works are made in single sittings without preparatory drawings, often shaped by rhythm and movement through music. In his ongoing series Paintings for Dead Artists, Topple uses fruit and flowers as anthropomorphic forms, developing signature colour palettes to reflect the lives, deaths, and legacies of historical artists.