Working from his studio in the North of England, Jamie Frost (born 1977, UK) creates paintings and sculptures which depict the tenderness and recklessness of fleshy beings full of hopes, fears and desires. There is fallibility in the work, it speaks honestly about a growing sense of the precarious.
Often the artist speculates about more specific themes: physical breakdown and illness is presented in fragmented forms; ghostly landscapes speak to ecological and political breakdown; figures resist and comfort each other in works that address social and personal dynamics.
When making sculpture, Jamie throws hunks of moist green timber together in dynamic poses, punctuating them with delicate and intimately carved details. His paintings begin as broad figure-marks. The activity on the surface is sparing but visceral, suggesting all that is bodily. Coiled up energy is barely released as sopping wet brush strokes.
Jamie is currently developing work for a major solo exhibition, due to launch in autumn 2027. His work has been shown widely, including a touring solo exhibition of sculpture and drawing. Features and interviews include: Creative Boom; Considering Art podcast; The Yorkshire Post; The Guardian; The Times; Daily Telegraph, among others. Recently he has been shortlisted for the Materiality Matters prize, the Alpine Fellowship Visual Arts Prize, the Cotswold Sculpture Park ‘sculpture of the year’ award and the New Light Sculpture Prize. Previously he has been awarded accolades for drawing and sculpture, including membership of the Royal Society of Sculptors and the Society of Portrait Sculptors’ Talos award.
Jamie’s studio practice is interwoven with his role as a teacher and mentor. Participants spend time making and developing in Jamie’s studio. This is a shared way of learning and creating that he is immensely proud of. Find out more about this.
“ The figures in my work are a feral, unguarded people. They scrabble around ambitiously, trip and fall, leap up, push and kick, kneel in veneration. They are contradictions. Understanding them is like trying to step in the same stream twice.
Humans are vulnerable but powerful, we recognise that in each other. The possibilities held within ourselves are intoxicating. Such a vital, overwhelming force can wreak havoc or perform miracles. We should welcome that duality. We can take comfort from the chaotic world we experience, and our part in it, without judgement.
I am compelled by the physicality of things, objects, the landscape, other people, of myself. This is the language I draw upon when making, the things we feel most deeply show physically in our bodies. I'm a great believer in the idea that we are corporeal manifestations of our private and collective traumas, triumphs and expectations.
To physically embody a state of acceptance in an artwork, to observe and reflect the beautiful mess, is enabling for me. Inviting humanity's complex, fugitive nature into your life is terrifying and exhilarating. It is a hopeful act in a wild world. “
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