Paintings
12 works
James McQueen It Started With A Kiss | 1/1 For Sale
James McQueen
It Started With A Kiss | 1/1
Mixed-media acrylic, spray paint, ink and silkscreen on fine art paper
66 × 99 cm
About this work
It Started With A Kiss is a unique 1/1 mixed-media work on fine art paper (66 × 99 cm) in which James McQueen transforms a romantic cliché into a formally sophisticated artwork. Using acrylic, spray paint, ink, and silkscreen in a layered process central to his practice, McQueen produces a surface of considerable visual richness — one that captures the spontaneous energy of gesture while maintaining the precision of the printed image. The phrase is rich with romantic mythology: the kiss as origin point, the moment from which everything else unfolds. McQueen takes this universally recognisable narrative shorthand and renders it with directness and wit, inviting the viewer to consider both the charm and the self-awareness embedded in such language. The 1/1 designation confirms that this is an entirely unique work, with no edition beyond itself, lending it the irreproducibility of a singular object. McQueen has established himself as one of the foremost language-based artists of his generation, and works such as It Started With A Kiss demonstrate his gift for identifying the phrases that define how people experience love, desire, and the stories they tell themselves about both. The combination of spray paint, ink, and silkscreen gives the work a complex, layered surface that rewards sustained looking.
Browse Series
Edition & Provenance
- Medium
- Mixed-media acrylic, spray paint, ink and silkscreen on fine art paper
About James McQueen
James McQueen Paintings for Sale | Guy Hepner, New York
James McQueen is a British artist born in 1977 whose paintings sit at the intersection of Pop sensibility, material obsession, and dry British wit. He works under a pseudonym, and his identity is secondary to the work — which is the point. What matters is what ends up on the canvas.
McQueen's paintings are built, not simply applied. He works in layers — paint over paint, colour over colour — then sands the surface back to expose what lies beneath, then seals it in lacquer. The result is a depth that photographs struggle to capture. These are surfaces you need to stand in front of.
His subject matter has ranged from reinterpreted Penguin paperback covers to politically charged commentary to the large-scale mixed-media Anthology works now available through Guy Hepner. Across all of it runs a consistent preoccupation: the visual language of mass culture, rendered monumental and unfamiliar by the seriousness of the craft brought to bear on it.
McQueen has shown extensively in London and is represented in significant private collections internationally.
Guy Hepner | 177 Tenth Avenue, New York