BEN SLEDSENS

Whilst painting figuratively, Ben Sledsens depicts scenes that verge on the abstract: colour and light are as much the protagonists as his figures. With the same delicacy that characterises all his work, Yellow Jungle is a dream-like scene, punctuated by the interplay of three peoples’ diverging gazes. The composition centers around two men, one woman, sitting together at an outdoor table with fruity umbrella-clad drinks.

Exuding a sense of luminous calm, the scene is tinged with a sense of riveting uncertainty. The composition recalls renaissance paintings in which the viewer is guided from one point of the painting to the next by each character’s position and body language.

Between the three figures, an invisible tension hums, perhaps an unspoken conflict caught in their stillness and sideways glances. Or could they be alarmed by something hidden in the depths of the yellow jungle?

Doubt infiltrates the scene: is there another character in the trees? Did the woman gazing into the jungle hear a sound? Or perhaps a tiger like the ones Le Douanier Rousseau painted in his imaginary renditions of lush jungle landscapes?

The scene is anchored in reality by the familiarity of one man’s 3-stripes Adidas sneakers, or the woman’s fashionable sling back kitten heels, yet it is all transposed into this wild, otherworldly yellow décor, which is as much the canonical colour of light and joy as of caution and unease...