Marcus Jahmal

Self-taught painter Marcus Jahmal brings together elements of autobiography, folklore, history, and imagination to create unsettling admixtures culled from contemporary life. Working between the genres of still life, portraiture, and landscape, Jahmal crafts an uncanny world of anthropomorphic beasts, cops and robbers, dice players, and skulls set in imaginary yet familiar spaces. His work draws from the aesthetics of Phillip Guston, Francis Bacon, and Robert Colescott, blending real and imagined imagery into his own style of magical realism. Jahmal’s Brooklyn upbringing also enters his paintings through visual references to the interior of his childhood home, memories of streetside gamblers, and family trips to Atlantic City; the looming threat of gentrification additionally haunts these scenes.