“The old landscape painters like the Hudson River School were my first hook”, Vaulkhard explains, recalling the beginning of the new body of work, before embarking on his mammoth journey in the US last year. “They were trying to paint not just what they saw, but how it felt to be there—alone, tiny, overwhelmed. I saw that and thought, yes, this is something worth chasing. So I did. I followed Lewis and Clark’s trail across America—5,000 miles in a car, trying to see what’s left of that old wildness. Some of it’s still there. Some of it’s been strip-malled into oblivion.”

As the journey unfolded, Vaulkhard also started thinking about other movements too: “Clyfford Still and the Bay Area painters too. The Abstract Expressionists—they weren’t painting rivers or mountains, but they were painting that same feeling. Still’s work especially—those jagged, torn shapes, like land breaking apart—felt like the inside of the Sublime. Like, what if the landscape was emotional? What if the silence was screaming? “The show is me trying to hold all of that in one place—beauty, ruin, stillness, noise. Trying to make sense of how we see the world now, when it’s all been photographed, paved, painted before. But still… sometimes, it hits you. That vastness.”

Curator MC Llamas is Vaulkhard’s Champion for The Wick. She said: “James’ picturesque landscapes are incredibly peaceful and soothing, which I think is needed in the world in which we live now. He is an extremely skilled painter and the works are reflective of years of technical experimentation, they are captivating and take the viewer through to a meditative state. I also believe they are important paintings in their art historical context, their vivid colour tones are dreamlike and hallucinogenic as much as they are apocalyptic, they are Turner-esque, reminiscent of late Van Gogh whilst having the sun drenched qualities evocative of David Hockney. I am fascinated by the conversation and dichotomies between the beautiful and the transcendental, described in art for centuries, James’ works inquire and develop on that in a very generous and poetic way.”

“The Sublime & The Consumed” is the culmination of Vaulkhard’s consistent poetic tendencies in his painting practice in recent years, looking not only at the world beyond and outside, tracing in topologies our human stories, but an expression of a profound internal well, and a changing perspective on life. These are drawn out through an acceptance of contradiction and contrasts, between silence and noise, quiet and chaos, beauty and devastation, teased out in the works masterfully. Later this year, Vaulkhard’s will return to Nairobi, his birthplace, to present a solo exhibition – the first time he has exhibited in Kenya for some time. “I think it’ll bring out another side of the work, especially how place and memory get tangled up.”

As to how the artist sees his work evolving from this moment, he reflects on the pull away from the portraits and figuration he was once known for, towards abstract explorations: “the more I work, the less I care about rendering a scene “correctly” and more about capturing what it feels like—like a note held too long in a song. I’m sketching ideas for a series on lost utopias—half history, half fiction—and thinking about turning my sketches into a book or film journal. It’s still fuzzy, but I trust the mess now.”