Pigpen Punch

Over the Influence is thrilled to present Pigpen Punch, premiering a new series of paintings by Royal Jarmon.

Repetition is a recurring theme throughout Jarmon’s ever-evolving practice. In this new body of work, Royal incorporates childhood imagery taken directly from a drawing the artist made as a child. What was once doodled onto a piece of paper is now immortalized through the means of a canvas.

The title of the show, Pigpen Punch, aptly illustrates the stylistic quality of the work. The human-sized smeared and smudged blossoms wave to the viewer from the canvas, as if smiling from a garden or a green pasture. With the same blooms reiterated on each canvas, the artist creates a symbolic language to be understood by those sensitive to the subject matter–botanists, children, and anyone who has ever admired the beauty of a flower. It is not a naturalistic rendering, but rather a simplified symbol of a flower. Petals and pollen-covered centers are reduced to lines and circles: lines for the petals and stems, circles for the flower centers and leaves. The scale of the paintings allows for larger-than-life blooms, creating the illusion of walking through a colorful and nostalgic garden reminiscent of itchy grass, stained knees, muddy palms, and paint covered fingers.