Jaime Courcelle: Against Linear Motion, Toward Centripetal Light

By BradQuan Copeland.

The personification of angst rises through ravenous brainstorms to crack the sky of the turbulent mind, clotting into pigment before it ever manifests as thought. Winds shear through the barriers of memoryscape, braiding bane with bliss. Oil viscifies under the bristles, forcing brilliance to wash the white.

Hues merged from mayhem can bridge the gap between noetic vision and the waking wreck. In the sanctum, those who dream their paintings will paint their dreams through the absence of light, incepting luminous stars in spite of the distortion of night. It’s an echo Vincent van Gogh once articulated along the intersection of restlessness and vision.

It’s far from simple to fall in line when linear motion defies the shape of time. This is the unspoken truth of Albany’s respected though obscure Jaime Courcelle. His fully charged, yet compact, lived-in studio is permeated by the fatty presence of patinated oil.

Within, there unfolds a restless curiosity that breathes untouched by sleep. It’s an immersion into the creative interior of a man who paints with a vigorous intention that innately corners even naivety’s attention.

This was proven beyond a reasonable doubt by the presence of my beloved younger cousin Jahmeek, an upstate YN, internet-raised and culturally fluent aspiring rapper, steadily finding his footing through the endless growing pains of early adulthood.

“Yo, brother, how am I posed to survive around people who wanna be miserable? I want so much more for myself,” he said to me via Instachat a week or so prior.

Empathizing deeply with his position, I invited him along to my interview with Jaime, believing that an extended reach transcending the bounds of music alone could strengthen his creative fabric, helping him widen his perceptual frame to unfurl and color his flow beyond the simplicity of neutral tones.

Exuberantly, he accepted the invitation. On the way there, he saturated my eardrums with NBA YoungBoy praise. “Is this guy really Gen Z’s Lil Wayne?” I asked myself.

“It’s the brownstone with the hydrant out front, dude,” Jaime said via text as I drove down Madison Avenue, forced to loop back around due to insufficient street parking. We eventually marched our way down, umbrellaed by the amber gleam of the streetlights. Spotting the cherry-red hydrant, I swiftly climbed the stairs and phoned Jaime, only to realize we were at the wrong place.

“Sorry, dude. I meant the one beside the hydrant!” Jaime shouted from next door, his laugh loose like a sun-worn surfer, as if his time in California never quite left him.

Heading in, we were immediately met with creation itself: small canvases posted along the narrow hallway, larger works seated face-to-face and leaned against both sides of the wall. Upon entering the studio, breathwork greeted us as several scores of Neo-Expressionist and Abstract Expressionist paintings engulfed the space.

“Damn bro, you did all these?” Jahmeek asked in astonishment, his eyes trailing the weight of each canvas, easing from one piece to the next. What he witnessed was an uncorrupted conceptual exchange where restraint far outweighed expansion. Watching his reaction reaffirmed my belief, rendering it tangible, no longer abstract, but lived in real time.

Anyone can understand fine art if they’re rooted in a genuine state of self-awareness, open enough to feel the radial essence living inside each piece. The transfixed demeanor on his terpene-induced face revealed him drowning in the interwoven potency of Jaime’s chromatic hurricane. At its core, nothing escaped. Its force, paradoxically centripetal, closing around him in full.

Watching that magnetism take hold, it became clear that Jaime’s pieces feed themselves, pulling energy inward toward a concentrated center. Their earth tones and warmer hues meander back into themselves, layering through repetition as they stack under pressure. The effect radiates like a prismatic explosion. 

It’s a tight, almost violent coherence that still feels safe, like a jubilant acid trip on a honeyed day as you boundlessly roam through prickly grass with bare feet, buoyed by the joy of long-term friends. That’s an internal paradise that masterfully conveys sensation viscerally rather than narratively. Stylistically, he exhibits affinities with the later work of Dutch artist Willem de Kooning, particularly in his handling of figural instability.

Given the intrinsic force of the moment, I knew this was exactly what Jahmeek needed, as well as myself, since engaging with art has always been deeply therapeutic for me. That sense of purity only intensified when Jaime offered us an earthy, cold-pressed juice composed of carrot, apple, ginger, and a hint of celery as we took our seats beside his easel.

Initially reluctant, Jahmeek figured, what the hell. He was ultimately sold by the quiet confidence of Jaime’s natural, anti-pharmaceutical salesmanship. Upon first ingestion, I chuckled at his reflexive face scrunch as the ginger’s sting surged across his tongue and gums. As the slight burn gradually faded into clarity, he exhaled and anchored himself. A sturdier expression, touched by transformation, settled across his face.

“Yo, my airways feel mad open! I feel like I can buss out a hunnit push-ups right now bro,” he said, as Jaime and I laughed.

“It’s the micronutrients, man. You can feel the tips of your fingers tingling!” Jaime responded, packing his bowl to the brim with his friend’s homegrown sour diesel before inhaling, passing, and accepting the pen as our stoner rotation began.

With freestyle clips of Ari at Home murmuring faintly in the background, we dove into the origins of his practice and ventured through the ever-shifting consciousness of the artist himself. Before we began, he smiled and shrugged. “No one’s ever interviewed me before man. Do whatever you have to do and ask me whatever you want.”

What ensued wasn’t a break from the moment, but its cinching as articulation began where gesture left off.

RRX: When you’re painting, what part of yourself is leading the process—instinct, memory, emotion, or something quieter beneath all of that?

JC: “It’s all those legs, but it’s not at the time—like, you’re not always aware of it. Sometimes I want to sit down and I think I’m going to paint something I can really match, and I never do. I’ve never been able to really replicate things. So it seems more like instinctual. You make a mark and that’ll kind of trigger a memory, or whatever you did that day. A single mark will trigger a memory that can then turn into a personal narrative that either you’re afraid to talk about or something you’re not necessarily aware of.”

RRX: Your work feels less like depiction and more like excavation. What do you feel you’re uncovering within yourself as forms emerge and dissolve?

JC: “It’s kind of like journaling. You think about things that possibly happened, that you might want to happen, that never did happen, and it all kind of layers into your soul. You’re just pouring that out, whether you realize it or not.”

RRX: There’s a strong sense of compression in your paintings rather than expansion. How do you understand that inward pull, both on the canvas and in your own inner life?

JC: “You start making the same marks you’re doing, and just keep doing it, doing it, doing it. I’m doing a whole bunch of things of getting back to the basics. It’s about dancing and flying. You kind of let go. If you’re comfortable enough with yourself, you get to a point where you’re just doing it.”

RRX: How do you experience control in your practice, and where do you consciously allow yourself to surrender it?

JC: “You have to have a practice. If you really want to go for it, you just accept it as another part of your life. It’s habit. You could choose to sit and watch TV all day, but this is just something I accept. Practice helps, just like anything else.”

RRX: Do your paintings feel like extensions of your internal world, or do they feel more like environments you momentarily inhabit and leave behind?

JC: “I don’t leave it behind. It makes me feel comfortable. I don’t have a lot of furniture or shiny sh**, so I just make my own. I like minimal. How much do I really need?”

RRX: When you look at a piece that feels finished, what tells you it has reached a point of truth rather than simply completion?

JC: “You could always add another layer, but you have to be comfortable enough to let it go. Sometimes it’s immediate—like, I finish something and I’m like, ‘Yeah, that’s f***ing done.’ Other times I’ll just go right over the whole thing. Sometimes that’s the best thing to do. You think you ruined it, but then something pulls through. That little squat of paint catches your eye, and for some reason, it works.”

RRX: If someone were to truly understand your paintings, what do you think they would learn about the way you experience being alive?

JC: “I just think we’re all f***ing weird humans, and we’re all into things creatively. There’s so much music and so much art that you’ll love that you’ll never see. There’s so much out there in the world.”

 

“Sorry if any of that sounds all choppy and goofy,” he said once we came to a close. Chuckling, I reassured him that all was well and that I was more than appreciative of his time. What came next was unexpected. He gifted Jahmeek and I with free autographed micro canvases of our choice. Jahmeek was particularly ecstatic, as he was eagerly inquiring about pricing for some of the larger pieces.

Gathering our things, we said our goodbyes and left, but not before Jaime blessed us with yet another gift: a colossal nug that was easily over a gram. The hospitality was beyond warm, as he displayed the true colors of his down-to-earth character.

Exiting the premises, we made our way back to the car, Jahmeek deeply admiring the painting. “Yo…you seen Welcome to Derry? This sh** fire bro. It look like some Pennywise sh**!” he said, as I smiled with a toasty heart wrapped in immense satisfaction.

In the car, we made our way to Sake Café on New Scotland Avenue, where he expressed further interest in artistic excursions.

What remained with me surpassed the pulse of the night, hushing its fullness inward. The paintings didn’t release us; they subsumed us, leaving something focused yet lingering that still churns beneath the sheen.