The works of Jessica Rankin pictorialise the sensations, emotions and personal memories that words and landscapes can manifest within us. In the expressive paintings and watercolours on paper, Rankin balances the fluidity of spontaneous, gestural painted marks with the precision of the embroidery threads she carefully stitches onto the canvas, as both mediums fuse, respond, erase and mimic each other. This rhythmic interplay produces colourful, constellation-like compositions that become at once topographical, cosmological and psychological. Words and sentences from the poems that inspire the artist often appear on the pictorial surfaces or sides of the works, offering clues to the abstract feelings their imagery evokes.

In ‘Our Days Touching, JR’ (2024) rivers of paint swim from one side of the canvas to the other, though in many areas their shapes waltz around one another, and never quite collide. And yet, running down the right-hand side, neighbouring a pool of pink that encircles strokes of white, is the word ‘TOUCHING’, as though urging the formations to overcome the forces that keep them apart. ‘Our Days Touching, JR’ takes its title from the long poetry sequence ‘The Mud Hut’ by Jennifer Rankin, published in 1979.