Louisiana-born, Dallas-based artist Jammie Holmes creates stirring figurative paintings that “capture contemporary Black family life in the Deep South, meditating on ritual and tradition… [and] darker themes of suppression and fear in disenfranchised communities”, writes Jessica Klingelfuss for Elephant. Many of these centre on Thibodaux, the city where he grew up, and the backdrop of this emotive image. There, mourners often make black T-shirts “emblazoned with a portrait of their deceased loved ones and the words ‘Rest in Peace’”. In this work, however, Holmes has left the T-shirts blank for viewers to contemplate their own losses. “I need them to feel the painting,” Holmes tells Klingelfuss, “because I want them to experience what I felt when I was creating the art.”
