Enduring Strengths

American Art Collector

By Chadd Scott | June 2022

Artists are risk takers by nature. How else to explain pursuing a profession offering total uncertainty? How else to explain finding a signature style popular with collectors only to drop it?

That’s what J Louis has done in a new body of work representing a stunning departure from the demure, angelic female figures he had made a name for himself painting. Louis’ new women are angular. Black takes over where warm reds and yellows previously held sway. Gone are languid poses, replaced by a fierce verticality.

A risk Louis is willing to take.

“I don’t worry about it. I probably should, but I just let the work do what it does and if people want to join me—amazing—if they don’t, I totally understand,” Louis says of concerns about alienating collectors as his painting pursues new directions. “So far, my judgment to move from one aesthetic to another has always been received positively. I’m sure there will be a day where I’ll create a bunch of paintings and people will just despise them, but that hasn’t happened yet.”

Looking at Louis’ new work, it’s easy to see the influence of New York. Louis and his wife moved there from Chicago almost five years ago to join a community of creatives they had made friends with. From the black outfits to the guarded postures and upright poses, the women Louis paints now reflect New York couture, the severity of the city and its verticality.

He’s showcasing a different aspect of the femininity he admires in his wife and the other strong females who’ve shaped his life and have always inspired his paintings of women.

“[My work has] always been about their strength and enduring qualities, but there’s always been this duality between their strength and this kind of softness, this delicate touch,” Louis says. 

His new paintings dispatch with any delicacy to foreground female strength. The structural composition of Louis’ Pyramid series expresses this particularly.

“The pyramid and the triangle have always been associated with power and integrity and I really liked that idea,” he says.

Beyond what Louis is depicting in his paintings, how he’s getting there has also undergone a total transformation.

“I’ve almost always painted alla prima—wet onto wet—and I’ve used a special medium that keeps the paint wet for longer so I can paint for a month without the painting drying and just constantly move things around,” the artist says of the style, which had served him for more than a decade. “These are painted very differently where I do it in stages. I’ve been glazing. I’ll tape out shapes to get really crisp lines if I need them. It’s built upon a series of layers often starting with the background and building forward through that. It’s the opposite method of what I’ve done for my entire career.”

Another risk.

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