James Gale

The idea behind this acrylic painting was simple: contrast and chaos.

I wanted to express my discomfort with the way society often tries to reduce people into simple binaries. Man or woman. Straight or gay. Normal or autistic. Yes or no.

But people are rarely that simple.

There is an enormous range of personalities, identities, emotions, and experiences that exist between these perceived extremes. Some are clearly defined. Others are more fluid, complicated, or difficult to put into words. That doesn’t make them any less real.

And so I called it Spectrum.

The black and white represent that binary way of thinking. Two extremes. Yes or no. One thing or another. Clear boundaries that leave very little room for anything in between.

The chaotic spectrum of colour cutting through the darkness represents everything that exists between those extremes.

It represents the enormous variety of people and experiences that make up humanity. Some identities are easy to explain. Others don’t fit neatly into a category. Some parts of who we are can change throughout our lives. Others feel deeply rooted in who we have always been.

All of them are equally valid.

That idea became particularly personal to me through my experience as an autistic person.

Autism is still often treated as something that is wrong. Something broken. Something that exists outside of society rather than as another form of human experience. There can be an assumption that being different means being less valid, simply because it doesn’t fit what society has traditionally considered “normal.”

I don’t believe that.

I wanted Spectrum to challenge that way of thinking.

The colours aren’t contained within neat boundaries. They overlap, collide, blend, and move into one another. There is chaos, but there is also beauty in that chaos.

To me, that is what makes the spectrum so important.

We don’t all need to fit neatly into the same boxes. We don’t need to be reduced to a single label or forced to choose between two predefined options simply because they are easier for society to understand.

There is beauty in the complexity.
There is beauty in the uncertainty.
There is beauty in being difficult to define.

I created this painting in the hope that it encourages a little more openness towards the people who don’t fit neatly into the categories we have created. Perhaps those categories were never capable of describing us completely in the first place.

I finished the painting with a gloss varnish, giving the surface an almost wet, reflective quality. It deepens the colours and adds another layer of movement, especially when light catches the painting from different angles.
The piece can feel slightly different depending on the time of day, the space it occupies, or even the mood you bring to it.

Like all abstract work, Spectrum isn’t meant to tell you exactly what to see.

This is simply my side of the story.
The way these ideas felt to me when I put them onto the canvas.
What it becomes beyond that is completely yours.

Warm regards,

James Gale