Paul Jenkins

Immanent Colour - Works on Paper from the 1990s in Watercolour and Ink

To me there is nothing left to chance in watercolour

Paul Jenkins: Immanent Colour, Works on Paper from the 1990s in Watercolour and Ink, confirms the artist’s place as one of the modern masters of the watercolour medium. Jenkins made watercolours throughout his life. His works are in museums internationally and throughout the UK, including a watercolour in the Victoria & Albert Museum.

“Watercolour is not elusive,” Jenkins wrote. “It is the architecture beneath the sea that cries to be left out, to be discovered. And when it rings right, it sounds very much like a bell tolling deeply in the sea from some strange sunken chapel.”

This exhibition explores the artist’s unique relationship with watercolour looking specifically at his late works from the 1990s. Isabelle Dervaux, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Drawings at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City observed that Jenkins’ watercolours exemplify the paradox of an art form that can be so spontaneous and yet be so demanding and require so much control on the part of the artist. “To me there is nothing left to chance in watercolour,” Jenkins wrote.