Jordan “Watts” Watson (b. Jamaica, Queens NYC, 1979) is a self-taught multi-media visual artist and curator, part of the Ultra Contemporary Afrofuturism art movement along with Rick Lowe, Mark Bradford, Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Tschabalala Self and Noah Davis. His works explore storytelling and visual metaphor.
Throughout several social media platforms, Watts has amassed a cult like following consisting of over 5 million art collectors, mega galleries, trendsetters and the biggest names in the arts and entertainment industry such as Gagosian, Rihanna, Katy Perry, Artsy, Simon de Pury, Guy Oseary to name a few.
His large-scale paintings—rendered in oil paint and pastel on raw canvas—explore universal subjects such as identity, community, truth, memory, and imagination. His works are replete with art historical references to modernism, surrealism, ‘80s/’90s graffiti, Kerry James Marshall, Peter Doig, Francis Bacon and others as well as Afrofuturism incorporating science-fiction, technology, and futuristic elements into his work. His process is also very personal, drawing from his memories, experiences, traumas, and family history growing up in south side Jamaica, Queens and world travels as an adult.
Starting from a solid colour ground, he develops the scene around his figures with painterly, foggy brushwork, playing with how perception is affected when the descriptive focus is placed not on human agents but on their surroundings. Figures materialise in recessive space, stripped of physical identifiers. Bodies are described by their painted context, highlighting Watson’s embrace of tenuous ambiguities and his close observation of the relationship between humans and their surroundings. Their quiet haziness, developed with the soft touch of Watson’s hand, probes the imprecision of memory and examines the possibility that we are all products of our environment.
