There is a long-standing assumption that the Old Masters belong firmly to the past. Their authority feels settled, their images fixed. Yet Jake Wood-Evans has built a practice on quietly undoing that certainty. His paintings begin with familiar compositions—Velázquez, Lawrence, Gainsborough—but they rarely end there. Instead, they hover in a state of flux, where figures seem to dissolve as quickly as they emerge.
Wood-Evans trained at Falmouth University before refining his approach through study in Madrid. Time spent at the Prado proved decisive. Rather than pushing him toward faithful replication, it sharpened his awareness of what happens when images are revisited, reinterpreted, and, crucially, disrupted. Today, working from a studio near Lewes, he approaches art history not as a fixed archive but as material to be tested, unsettled, and reworked.
His early paintings take canonical portraits and place them under pressure. Small in scale but unsettling in effect, they focus on figures that once embodied absolute power — papal authority, royal dominion — and begin to erode them. The compositions remain largely intact and the subjects identifiable, yet faces dissolve into haze and psychological presence gives way to something ghostly. The source stays legible; what it once signified does not.
As the work developed, the scale grew and the subject matter expanded into the grander world of British Golden Age society portraiture. Silks, powdered wigs, and formal postures remain readable, but the authority they once conferred is quietly withdrawn. The figures feel less like specific likenesses than memories of imperial pomp, the trappings of rank vibrating against an underlying unease.
From there the work pivoted toward more crowded, energetic historical and mythological scenes — tumbling figures, dramatic gestures, and collective drama drawn from David, Poussin, and especially Rubens. These narratives are destabilised rather than faithfully restaged, with colour, movement, and surface disruption taking precedence over clarity, so that presence competes openly with absence.
The most recent work loosens the relationship to source material further still. Landscape, weather, and the drama of light increasingly replace the single portrait subject, while nocturnal and bacchanalian scenes push historical echoes toward the edge of abstraction. The imagery remains informed by the past, but operates with growing independence from it.
At the centre of this practice is a method that balances control with risk. Wood-Evans begins by constructing the painting carefully, mapping tone, structure, and colour in a deliberate, time-intensive process. He then disrupts that surface — scraping back, wiping away, and reworking passages of paint. Oils are allowed to drip or pool, and the surface is sometimes scored or abraded. These interventions are not corrective; rather, they introduce uncertainty, turning the painting into a record of decisions made and undone. Traces of earlier marks remain embedded in the surface, creating a layered image that carries both presence and absence.
Wood-Evans is represented by Unit London and has exhibited widely across the UK and internationally — at Nottingham Castle Museum & Art Gallery, The Holburne Museum, Hampshire Cultural Trust, and the Musée d’Art Classique de Mougins. Solo exhibitions including Legacy & Disorder (2019), Relic (2020), and the recent Nocturne series (2025) have traced the development of the work over time. His paintings are held in public and private collections across the US, Europe, and beyond — among them the Bunker Foundation (Rudwin DeWoody Collection) in Los Angeles, the Di Donna Collection, the Goss-Michael Foundation in Dallas, the Jiménez-Colón Collection in Puerto Rico, the Mougins Museum Collection, and the Sagol Family Collection in Tel Aviv.
His engagement with art history continues to expand. He is currently developing new work in response to J.M.W. Turner for an upcoming presentation at The Historic Dockyard Chatham in 2026, extending his focus towards landscape, light, and atmosphere.
In conversation with The Exclusivist, Jake Wood-Evans reflects on the evolution of his practice — from early encounters with the Old Masters at the Prado to a process shaped by erasure, risk, and the persistence of historical images. He discusses how he selects his sources, how far an image can be pushed before it breaks down, and why the canon remains an open field for experimentation.
Q&A With Jake-Wood Evans
Relationship with the Classical Canon
How did your relationship with the classical canon develop? When did it start to feel like a space you could work within freely — whether by inventing from its ideas or by reinterpreting existing images? Was there a particular work or moment that opened that up for you, or has that impulse always been part of your process?
After university I spent some time at the Prado in Madrid, studying paintings by some of the most famous classical artists, trying to capture the realism in my own drawings. Back in my studio I went through a stage of setting up still life arrangements and doing figurative paintings from life. But I was pretty broke and my options felt too limited. I was fortunate enough to be surrounded by incredible art books though, so I decided to use reproductions of paintings in those as my starting point. This was quite a few years ago now, and it was pretty uncool to be looking back at the old masters. Painting itself was going out of fashion and the trend was firmly towards conceptual art. The method I’d developed felt like the only option for me to investigate classical works. Referencing is obviously not a new approach – throughout history artists have recreated versions of work by artists who came before them. I really committed to this way of experimenting however, and the process of exploration became the essence of my practice. I find something enchanting in images that have repeated through the ages, and continue to endure. The passing of time itself, the recreation and alteration in memory and perspective, as well as changes in physical form, all feed into my ideas and creations. I continue to find endless possibilities in directly referencing past images, which allow me to change the themes and emotional values contained within them.
Choosing the Image
When you encounter a historical image that draws you in, what is it that holds your attention? Is it composition, atmosphere, a flaw, a tension — what tells you an image has enough charge to be dismantled and rebuilt?
It depends and has definitely changed over the years. I used to work on a lot of portraiture, and would consider the subjects ‘characters’ that I could alter and lose elements of. In a very basic sense, these characters felt like ghosts from a past time. The process evolved to focus more intensely on absences in a painting. I am drawn to busy landscapes, a figure wearing complex fabrics, or works with background details that excite me as much as the main subject. To me, a rich reference image offers opportunities to strip sections away while leaving just enough detail to create a compelling impression. I am trying to get to the essence, or interior of a painting, as if viewing its skeleton. I am interested in exploring the tension between retaining details and emotional values, while drastically altering the visual information. I’m trying to push and play with how far I can go with that, while retaining a link to the original, so that it’s still identifiable on some level.
Image and Erasure
Your paintings often hover on the edge of disappearance. When did that willingness to let an image almost slip away become central to your process? Was it a technical development or a deeper shift in how you think about what a painting should hold on to?
Early on my process was about observing and responding – with colour, mark and tone – to what was in front of me. My aim was not to guess, but to make decisions that I felt were ‘correct’ and as honest as possible. Not in a photorealistic sense, but by expressing confidently with marks that looked almost effortless. The likes of Sargent, Titian and Velázquez were my idols. If something was ‘wrong’, I would rub out and remark, retell. I was interested in a decisive integrity that could be evidenced by the hand of the artist. But aiming for such perfection is futile, so I found myself constantly erasing the work! I found relief in the act of deleting, and I began to notice and become fascinated by the traces that are left behind. With careful observation, you can witness where even the very greatest painters have made an alteration or moved a line. There is something about this physical, human connection to the maker that I always loved. It seemed somehow quieter and more integral for me to concentrate on these fragments of information in my own work, remnants of the artist’s hand that are evidenced through the process of working and re-working areas in paint. They have become absolutely key. I never have set ideas or narratives decided upfront, I find out via the process of marking in and removing where the work wants to take me.
The Unseen Labour
There’s a quiet intensity in the paintings — a sense that a great deal of work sits just beneath the surface. What part of your process tends to remain most hidden from viewers, the part they might never realise is there?
I begin by building up a painting, referencing the original source. I set out the structure, deciding on tones and colour. The longer I do that, the more the paint dries. I like to push the painting to a place where it feels immensely risky to start rubbing away and removing. It’s that tension which often creates something rich and interesting. Spending time on the initial stage means there are marks that remain on the surface even when I rub away, but I can’t foresee where. There will be accidents – where marks hang, a section of unexpected brightness or a delicate area of brushwork that really draws me in. At that stage, I’ll review the work, and I might want to go back in and build up a section of the painting that has just materialised. The piece evolves and reveals itself in a way that is unexpected and unknown to me. It’s critical this process is not fully under my control and there is an element of chaos involved!
Studio Environment
What kind of studio environment do you need for the work to unfold in the way it does? Are there particular conditions or working habits that have become non-negotiable for you?
I have a relatively simple setup in my studio. It is quite messy. I have a huge palette made of glass, which I use to mix my colours on. I have books around me, pages of which are torn out and scattered. I do need to tidy up every so often as it can get very chaotic! I listen to music to help channel the energy I want to be reflected in the paintings. The music ranges from classical to old film soundtracks to techno! Perhaps I might need to work with a bit more intensity, or it can help me be more thoughtful and relaxed.
Evolving Relationship to the Canon
Across your exhibitions there’s been a sense of widening — from earlier works that engaged more directly with classical motifs to more recent paintings that feel increasingly open in their handling of the image, with a greater emphasis on atmosphere and suggestion. Has your relationship to the canon shifted as the work has opened up in this way? And does that evolution give you any sense of where the paintings might be heading next?
I do think my relationship with the canon is widening. I refuse to be stuck doing one certain type of painting, because the whole point of my approach is that I’m constantly exploring and discovering. At the moment I’m looking closely at JMW Turner, in preparation for a show this autumn at The Historic Dockyard Chatham. We have been lucky enough to borrow several original pieces by Turner, from The Courtauld Gallery and Tate Britain, which will be on show alongside new work of mine. I’ve been absorbed in reading about Turner, looking at books and sketches. I’m interested in responding to the places and themes depicted in these works from the past, exploring our relationship with them from a present day standpoint.
Collecting
Do you collect anything yourself? And is there one non‑sentimental object you own — something valued purely for its presence or craftsmanship — that you’d never part with?
If I’m not emotionally attached to something, it doesn’t tend to hold much value for me. Over the years I have built up quite an impressive library of art books, and it would be extremely hard to part with those!
Endnote
What ultimately defines Wood-Evans’ practice is not simply its dialogue with the past, but the way it renews it. His paintings allow images to shift, erode, and reassemble, opening them up to new readings rather than fixing them in place. His approach is guided by curiosity — by a belief that the past is not static, but continually reshaped through the act of looking. As he moves toward new projects and new historical dialogues, his work continues to offer something rare: a space where the familiar becomes unfamiliar again, and where the canon is not simply revisited but reimagined.
Jake Wood-Evans Official Website | Instagram
Photo credits (right-hand side, top to bottom): The Three Graces, after William Edward Frost, 160 × 140 cm, oil on linen, 2025; The White Horse, after John Constable, oil on canvas, 2023; Study for Revelry, 104 × 58 cm, oil on linen, 2024; Storm at Sea 1, 160 × 140 cm, oil on linen, 2019. © Jake Wood-Evans.
