J Carino’s paintings explore queer intimacy, identity, and humanity’s elemental connection to nature. Born in Littleton, Colorado, in 1988, and recently relocated to London, J draws inspiration from plants, animals, changing landscapes, mythology, and the physical bonds between people. His monumental nude figures inhabit environments that feel both idyllic and uncertain, merging with trees, flowers, rocks, and mountains across different scales of time. Through vibrant color and dynamic compositions, J presents queerness as an innate part of the natural world.

“Color, for me, is a heightened reality.”

J’s paintings begin with direct observation of nature—a fallen tree, a particular animal, or an unfamiliar plant. He develops these subjects through nature studies and plein-air pastel drawings, which often establish the palettes of his finished works. Renderings of live models and videos of his own body provide additional source material, allowing self-portraiture, observation, and imagination to overlap.

After researching the historical and cultural meanings attached to organic forms, J allows relationships between bodies, objects, and motifs to emerge spontaneously. Blocks of earth and jewel tones, gestural brushstrokes, and layered patterns create dense, collage-like scenes in which physical strength, desire, vulnerability, and resilience coexist.

“I see patterns as a kind of personal language to symbolize larger concepts and themes that I can then weave together into different narratives.”

In Can’t Take the Roots (2025), a nude figure bends and twists beneath the sweeping weight of an uprooted tree. The curves of the body echo the trunk, branches, and exposed roots, while saturated pinks, purples, ochres, and deep blues collapse the distinction between flesh and landscape.

Through this entanglement, the painting transforms displacement into an image of endurance. Even when separated from familiar ground, the figure and tree appear to carry their origins within them, reflecting broader ideas of queer resilience, belonging, memory, and the parts of identity that cannot be taken away.

Following his relocation to London, J continues to explore the naturalness of queer bodies and relationships through increasingly layered paintings shaped by observation, research, and personal symbolism. As he begins graduate study at the Royal College of Art, his evolving practice brings new landscapes and experiences into an ongoing examination of desire, paradise, danger, and resilience.

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