P. James Bryans is a printmaker, specifically screenprinting, as well as creating digital paintings, and 3D prints.
He also undertakes commissions, creating hand produced, limited edition screenprints for artists, galleries and corporations.
Do you remember your childhood?
Do you remember what you saw?
Do you remember the feeling? The wonder, the innocence?
For P. James Bryans it was a childhood full of daydreams and wonderment. The bush, calm and secluded. The night sky with its stars and vanilla milky-way, and the thousand colours in a single blade of grass.
Growing up on an idyllic country farm, James spent his days wandering through the bush and giving his imagination free reign.
Now, as an adult, he manipulates and appropriates fragments of those times from his (embellished) memories, along with the books and ephemera of his childhood to capture those moments that we treasure and make us who we are.
His artworks have often been referred to as ‘bedtime story’ assemblages. Using themes from the 1950’s, the ‘Age of Innocence’, such as the utopian nuclear family or his own ‘Enid Blyton’-esque children Bryans creates screenprints of innocence, purity, kitsch, nostalgia… schmaltzy!
His works, however, leave out particular detail. There are no facial features. Items that his characters are gazing in wonder at are non-existent. Like our childhood memories there is a void, an absence of detail that gets filled in by our adult self. We have to narrate the rest of the story. Coincidental, accidental and unexpected connections occur, leading to surprising analogies.