James Gough

Red Route

My work uses bold colour, cartoonish imagery, and text applied using acrylic paint, oil pastel, pencil and collage. Autobiographical in nature, it playfully addresses – among other themes – loneliness, masculinity, and the absurd, balancing humour with introspection and offering glimpses of personal experience beneath an irreverent surface.

Behind the Scenes
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About My Practice

I work mainly with acrylic paint, oil pastel, and pencil on canvas or wood, recently expanding into sculpture after making a plaster cast for an exhibition in May 2025. My process often begins with technical image-making but drifts into more conceptual territory as I search for meaning after the fact.

Themes of loneliness, toxic masculinity, and positive nihilism recur throughout my work – though I approach them with humour and irreverence. I like to juxtapose cartoonish, unserious visuals with more contemplative undercurrents. I often use text in my pieces, offering a suggestion of meaning without spelling things out too neatly.

Alongside painting, I work part-time as a tattoo artist. Tattooing complements my art practice – it shares the same tension between creating compelling images and giving them emotional or narrative weight. While I’m still in my first few years of making art, I feel my practice developing quickly, with growing curiosity for sculpture and conceptual work.

Tools & Materials

I work from a modest home studio in Glasgow, where my airbrush is always set up and in use. My process begins with a growing catalogue of reference images from old books and found objects, kept in scrapbooks or digitally, and often explored through collage to test playful combinations or visual tensions. When an idea forms, I sift through these materials, digitally pairing or distorting images before translating them onto canvas or wood, typically using a projector onto the chosen surface – though I’ll also work directly when it feels right. I like to keep my pace quick, usually finishing pieces within a day, balancing clean, precise proportions with the loose, textured marks of my airbrush and brushes.