As part of this year’s Diwali celebrations, Jayson was commissioned to create a live Rangoli-based centrepiece for the Wallace Collection Museum’s Friday Lates public art event. Having discovered this decorative art form first hand whilst travelling around India, Jayson has reinvented this practice to encourage public artistic creativity.So armed with an array of coloured powders derived from table salt, the artist made his mark on the museum floors by creating a water-lily motif entirely out of this medium. Afterwards, members of the public dropped in to make their own mark together, creating their version of a water-lily and finding affinities with painting whilst forming coloured shapes on the floor with their fingers. People from all walks of life joined in and in no time, there were more than 50 unique water-lilies floating in an illusory pond. What an amazing showcase of collective invention it turned out to be in such a forward-thinking museum!
In addition to this artistic collaboration with the audience, Jayson also had one of his oil paintings exhibited within an art trail of contemporary South Asian art that ran through the rooms of the Wallace Collection. The artist was extremely flattered to have his work hung in the same room as the Dutch and Flemish masters.