Jemma Sharp is successfully nailing down nightmares, delirious visions, and psychotic episodes on paper in her books. She does it with a terrifying clarity that’s almost forensic. The power of her images, and the inexorable sequences in which they proceed, amount to a highly distinctive and utterly unique, personal art statement.
At Thought Bubble 2025 in Harrogate, my table happened to be located adjacent to Sharp’s, and I was very happy to strike up an acquaintance. I think I recognised one book cover image from social media, and I threw in a fatuous remark about Virgil Finlay, the noted science-fiction pulp illustrator who also used a “stippling” technique to achieve his hallucinatory effects in black and white. Well, Sharp does use stippling, but that’s only part of the story; I find she comes from a background in producing portraits, and perhaps wanted to emulate a “photographic” feel on the paper. It might be more accurate to align her with the paintings of Chuck Close, one of the more assertive “photo-realist” painters from when that style was in vogue in American art galleries, and at his best he could outdo a hi-res scanner with his penetrating gaze. Sharp has the same intensity of staring, not missing a single detail, presenting a raw and unvarnished truth for the eyes. If I understand correctly, she also doesn’t need to bother with pencilling, and apparently launches her felt-tip pen directly onto the page, perhaps without any need of planning. No wonder she accepts the “automatic writing” mantle suggested by other critics, a term that’s previously been applied to the Surrealist poets and authors – and visual artists too, if you accept that the “cadavre exquis” is a form of automatism.
However, any concerns about technique, method or medium are swept aside when you open the cover of a Sharp book. The reader is instantly carried away – some might say drawn into a vortex – by the hypnotic flow of images, each successive tableau more outrageous than the last, and often rendered without any need for captions or words that might explain it away. Indeed, these pages are only partially identifiable as “comic strips” from the narrative sequence that’s implied by the order of the grids. Even then, the wild pictures seem to slip out of the borders and frames, demanding a crazy quilt of weird angles and shapes, to insist on their own chosen location on the page. You can call that strong artistic composition, and it is; but it also feels like these monstrous creations are alive, literally crawling across the page as you watch.
I seem to be edging towards some sort of definition of these nightmares, an impulse which I’m reluctant to follow; brave the reader who attempts any form of psychoanalysis here, and those of a semiotic bent will have their brains fried in 10 seconds by the sheer abundance of symbolism. I’m more inclined at the moment not to pry, and simply to remain astounded – or perhaps aghast – at the sheer audacity of these pages, the courage of spirit that can carry an artist across even the most dangerous, uncertain, and forbidden terrains of the mind. It takes courage to face the unknown, and continue on through a possibly painful or cathartic process, in order to get to the other side of these demons, to exorcise them completely.
I should stress at this point that Sharp’s art is not simply about shock value, or wallowing in extreme imagery in the manner of some Throbbing Gristle copyist, or acolytes from the schools of William Burroughs or David Cronenberg. True, Sharp could just about be aligned with the genres of “body horror” with her visceral, near-obsessive explorations of human bone, flesh, and teeth (what she does on the subject of dentistry alone will permanently sear your eyeballs), but I maintain there is a real empathy behind her questing pen strokes, a genuine concern for the human spirit, and the abiding impression at the end of each episode is a vision of how vulnerable we all are, how frail the corporeal frame in the face of powerful unknown agencies. The takeaway, for me, is one of compassion and hope, not revulsion or despair.
It takes a special kind of talent to examine this aspect of humanity with such an unblinking stare; even more to be able to set it down on paper so indelibly. By all means investigate! Four volumes of Fondant available so far, containing multiple episodes of full-strength delirium; Scrapbook of Life and Death, published by Avery Hill, is based on a real-life collection of unsettling news clippings (assembled by George Ives) of pathological dimensions.