Drawing from a tradition of epic painting, Jim Gaylord’s work combines meticulous figuration with obscure forms that are familiar but unrecognizable. His current paintings are based on imagery found within special effects and action sequences in films. These scenes are made up of split-second moments of abstraction. Gaylord creates studies for the final works by combining several of these frames at once, either tracing the shapes onto clear animation cels or layering them together digitally. The results are uncanny explosions of volatile forms.
Born in North Carolina in 1974, Jim Gaylord received a BA in Film from the University of NC, Greensboro, and an MFA in Painting from the University of California, Berkeley. Gaylord’s work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the West Collection, and the Progressive Art Collection.