Written for the Viewfinder Exhibition, December, 2022

Jesse Lezama is a figurative painter, who employs narrative painting, photography and sculpture to portray stories and character observations, both from his own familiar memories of his Trinidadian background and his current life in the UK. It has been of increasing importance to him in recent years to incorporate scenes from the rich Welsh landscape. He is often inspired by cultural and Biblical narratives and interlinks them into his own themes and narrative representations.

His work is deeply personal and we are invited to share in these raw human moments. The theme of family life is something which is relative to each of us and his paintings collectively lay bare its nature in a unique way.

His use of the medium allows the viewer to become enveloped in his work. His application of an extremely limited palette reigns in all harshness of tone and enhances the central focus of each painting as in one integral gesture. Attention to finer detail is not wholly neglected, even in his larger renderings, and his work possesses a softness and warmth; yet there remains an unrefined and fundamentally human quality that permeates each piece.

Séimhín Ór Ní Dhonnghaile,  

Irish Practitioner, 

Contemporary Art and Design Graduate

“His Second Brain”