As its centrepiece, In the Raw features a collection of large-scale, wooden diptychs. These paintings build upon Wallflower, Jessica Watts’ signature series of works. The artist plucks the subjects of her Wallflower paintings from their whimsical, wallpapered surroundings and places them in settings stripped of graphic patterning. The backdrops cleverly reveal what one might expect to find under peeled back wallpaper: woodgrain. More than a crafty visual technique, however, Watts’s decision to leave her large-scale Queensland walnut, Tasmanian oak, and NSW spotted gum canvases exposed is highly conceptual, revealing a desire to bring her practice down to earth.

Familiar themes of feminine power are still at the core of this series. Just as central as the series’ content, however, is the process behind it, which Watts demonstrates through a strategic use of medium.

In the main panels of each diptych, textured brushwork chronicles the individual strokes that make up each fabricated flower petal. Watts take this method of documenting the process even further in the smaller side panels, where abstracted forms and, in some cases, even her actual working palette, are featured. In both instances, the thick impasto contrasts the smooth flatness of the woodgrain. The wood, in turn, lends itself not only to a more muted backdrop that bleeds and blends into tattooed bodies marked by simple outlines and subtle shading, but also to the Australian timber mounts that surround them.

Each of these paintings is not confined by its frame. Hand-made by the artist, the wooden structures serve as extensions of the art, culminating in multimedia works constructed from start to finish by Watts herself.

In The Raw is a celebration of the process. While this interpretation includes the construction of the art itself, it also speaks to a more long-term process: Watts’ artistic development. In a select few of her large-scale paintings, a single ferry dots a horizon line. On the surface, this detail serves as a nostalgic nod to a childhood spent on the Sydney Harbour. At a deeper level, however, it represents a journey, and—as Watts steers her approach back to basics—an arrival.

Kelly Richman-Abdou
Art Historian & Museum Guide • Paris 2021