A rhapsody of colour in hues of lavender blue, moss green and canary yellow, the mesmerising Fishing For Steps exemplifies the dynamism and vibrancy for which Jadé Fadojutimi has become critically acclaimed. Painted during the final year of her MA program at the Royal College of Art, Fishing For Steps sees luscious strokes of pigment converge and coalesce is an explosive iteration of the artist’s intuitive practice. Embracing chance and chaos, Fadojutimi transforms the canvas into a complex emotional landscape which explores themes of identity, self-knowledge and unresolved emotion. Before Fadojutimi saw her thirtieth birthday she became the youngest artist in the collects ion of the Tate, London, which features her explosive painting, I Present Your Royal Highness (2018), with examples of her work now residing in prestigious museum collects ions, including The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore; and The Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, amongst others.

A mesmerising landmark from her artistic journey, the richly saturated canvas of Fishing For Steps pulses with gesture and movement as loose, translucent washes collide with thick blows of impasto. Culminating in a vivacious symphony of colour,, Fadojutimi’s lively and powerful mark making dances across the canvas in a dynamism that recalls the work of Jackson Pollock or Joan Mitchell. Building up thin layers of pigment with rhythmic caresses before intuitively scraping and scratching the painting’s luminous surface, Fadojutimi is able to give her compositions a sense of unbridled velocity. Shimmering washes of yellow and blue evoke the ethereal light of stained glass windows or early morning sunlight, while buoyant strokes of deep green recall the earthy shades found in nature. Colours and shapes bloom and recede, with the darkest shades being punctuated by jolts of red, creating a view to another world that is both disparate and analogous to ours, communicating truth and emotion through her spontaneous aesthetic.

Known for her colour-saturated compositions, Fadojutimi’s gestural application of colour flows between abstraction and figuration to conjure a host of different moods and sensations. In an interview with art critic David Trigg for studio international, Fadojutimi muses: “I’ve always loved colour. Painting mentions a whole ocean of colour and I was so ready to dive in” (the artist cited in David Trigg, “Jadé Fadojutimi - interview: ‘I bathe in the conversations between colour, texture, line, form, composition, rhythm, marks and disturbances’”, studio international, 26 April 2021, online). Fishing For Steps feels at once familiar and unfamiliar, invoking flashes of naturalistic imagery and alien landscapes in its obscured invocation of reality, our perception of the work forced to twist and bend with each stroke. Exploring notions of identity, emotion, imagination and play, Fadojutimi’s work bursts with pulsating dynamism, her exuberant brushwork recalling images of wild gardens and expansive seas. As the artist has described, “What I love about painting is that it can do something to you that you can’t really describe, and that is quite disturbings …A lot of my works are layered in what I am, or who I am. What I think things should be or shouldn’t be,” she explains. “I have this quite perverse relationship with paint. I really envy it. It can talk better than I do.” (Fadojutimi , quoted in Philomena Epps, Jadé Fadojutimi: Heliophobia, ELEPHANT, 9 December 2017).

Fishing For Steps exhibits Fadojutimi’s exquisite technique, one highly resolved for an artist so young in her career. Fadojutimi is a Londoner through and through; born in 1993, she graduated from the Slade School of Art in 2015 and received her MA from the Royal College of Art, where she won the Hine Painting Prize, in 2017. Though her background is British Nigerian, Fadojutimi cites Japan as the culture that catalysed her artistic style and continues to inspire her. She was a huge fan of Anime as a child, which she says helped her find an outlet for her own intense emotions, with the artist now visiting Japan multiple t.mes s a year for inspiration. Fadojutimi is said to work late into the night in her studio in South London listening to soundtracks from Japanese anime films, video games, and Korean dramas. Her compositions pulsate with the energy and dynamism of such animations, her gestural abstraction and vibrant use of colour evoking a dream-like climax of cinematic drama. Fadojutimi’s singular approach to abstraction marks a test.mes nt to the artist’s capacity to push boundaries and reinvent the tenets of contemporary painting, placing her as one of the most exciting painters working today.

《足 跡的探尋》宛如色彩斑斕的狂想曲——薰衣草藍、苔蘚綠和鮮豔黃，充分體現出使賈黛・法多朱蒂米畫作的動感活力，亦是藝術家聲譽卓著的原因。這幅畫作於她修讀皇家藝術學院碩士課程的最後一年，畫中的冶豔筆觸匯聚了各種色彩，展現出賈黛洋溢澎湃的即興創作風格。法多朱蒂米在創作上接受偶然與混亂，她把畫布化為錯綜複雜的情緒空間，以探討有關身份、自我認知和情感壓抑的主題。在法多朱蒂米30歲前，其極具爆炸力的畫作《欣呈殿下》（2018）被納入倫敦泰特現代藝術館館藏，令她成為該藝術館最年輕的藝術家。法多朱蒂米的其餘作品也可見於各大重要博物館館藏中，包括巴爾的摩藝術博物館及邁阿密當代藝術學院等，不能盡錄。

《足跡的探尋》豐豔飽和的畫布上，各種姿態和動感隨意散落，鬆散瀅透的油彩與厚塗的顏料互相碰撞，絕對是賈黛藝術旅程中讓人著迷的經典之作。法多朱蒂米採用幻亂斑駁的色彩，在畫布上留下活潑舞動的濃烈筆觸，令人聯想到傑克森・波拉克或瓊・米切爾的作品。藝術家以節奏感十足的輕觸，把一層層薄薄的顏料逐漸堆疊，再憑其直覺刮划畫布明亮的表面，為此作賦予無拘無束的速度感。閃閃發光的黃色及藍色油彩，猶如穿透彩繪玻璃的空靈光線，或清晨的飄緲日光；深綠色的輕柔筆觸，則仿似大自然的泥土色調；不同色彩和形狀绽放、消散，最深邃的色調以多抹豔紅點綴。賈黛透過其即興美學，構成一個與我們的世界既相異、又相似的景象，傳遞出真實與情感。

法多朱蒂米以色彩飽和的構圖見稱，她以靈巧明快的筆觸，塗上遊走於抽象與具象的色彩，挑起觀者種種感官情緒。在與藝評人大衛・特里格為《國際工作室》雜誌所做的訪問中，法多朱蒂米忖道：「我向來熱愛色彩。繪畫能帶來汪洋般浩瀚的色彩，而我已準備好深潛其中。」（藝術家訪問節錄，摘自〈I bathe in the conversations between colour, texture, line, form, composition, rhythm, marks and disturbances〉，大衛・特里格，《國際工作室》，2021年4月26日，網上文章）。《足跡的探尋》散發著熟悉又陌生的感覺，其對現實的迷濛描繪既像自然景色，也似外星異境；我們對作品的解讀，被逼隨著畫布上的每撇筆觸而改變。透過探索身份、情感、想像力和遊戲的概念，法多朱蒂米的作品迸發出澎湃躍動的活力，她熱情洋溢的畫筆勾勒出猶如野生綠林與廣闊大海的繁盛景象。正如藝術家所形容：「我之所以喜歡繪畫，因為它能給你帶來一種無法言喻的感覺，這相當惱人。 我的許多作品都包含了我的本質，或者說我是誰，同時表達出我認為事物該有或不該有的模樣。」她解釋道：「我與顏料的關係頗為扭曲。我真的很羨慕它，因它比我更能傳達訊息。」（法多朱蒂米，摘自〈Jadé Fadojutimi: Heliophobia〉，菲露敏娜・艾普斯，《ELEPHANT》雜誌，2017年12月9日）

《足跡的探尋》展現了法多朱蒂米精湛的技巧，對如此年輕的藝術家來說，她的藝術造詣可謂已相當成熟。生於1993年的法多朱蒂米是土生土長的倫敦人，她在2015年畢業於斯萊德美術學院，後在2017年獲得皇家藝術學院藝術碩士學位，並於同年贏得該學院的海因繪畫大獎。雖然法多朱蒂米為尼日利亞裔英國人，但她將日本視為啟蒙其藝術風格的文化，至今依然為其靈感來源。她從小就是日本動漫的忠實粉絲，對她而言，動漫為她自身強烈的情緒找到一個宣洩的出口，她每年亦會到訪日本數次以尋求靈感。據說，法多朱蒂米會在其位於倫敦南部的工作室內創作至深夜，同時聆聽著日本動漫電影、電子遊戲及韓劇的原聲音樂。她的畫作正正呈現了這些動畫的能量及活力，其筆下抽象的姿態及璀璨用色，更營造出如幻夢高潮般的電影感。法多朱蒂米獨特的抽象創作，證明她具有破格創新，擺脫當代油畫固有框架的能力，使她成為當代最讓人期待的畫家之一。