Through my paintings, I am attempting to redefine an object’s natural purpose, placing emphasis on the orchestrated exchange between them. Bathed in light, each one reveals its own mysteries. The details of their surface reveal signs of a life lived: dents, bruises, and more. It is as if they were having a conversation of their own, long before we approached the picture.
The inspiration for this current series of work has to do with various aspects of time (aging, the passing of, the displacement, and reorganization of things.) In most of my works, I present opposing stages of life. The objects are moved from their original growing place and somehow dropped, blown, moved and found their way to a congregated place among the other objects.
From my earliest interest in making images, I was naturally drawn to representation because I see and describe things in vivid pictures. My work is focused on the micro-the intricacies of things. I invite the viewer into a greater sense of looking into a painting. With a perceptual eye, even mundane objects open the universe within them and are only revealed to the careful observer. By placing these ordinary objects into an imagined space, I hope to transform the viewer from this world to another.
Within the last year, there has been a gradual shift in my work. After revisiting the paintings of one of my favorite painters, Walter Tandy Murch, I was reminded of something very magical that I have always admired about his small diminutive works. Murch discussed his analysis of reality, “I must not paint the thing itself, but will paint the air between myself and the thing and beyond.” This challenged my observation of the object and my portrayal of it to the viewer.
In this recent work, the way I build the painting has become more improvisational. In my two most recent paintings (“Cherries, Muscadines, and Branch” & “Apple, Berries, and Leaf”) the objects are woven together, combined in a type of visual briar patch. Much like the accumulation of debris within the natural environment, in every added layer of the painting, the image is realized as objects are added. The intimacy between each object is heightened by the condensed space. These are unusual and banal aspects of space and one might only see the relationship if they rummaged the forest floor. There one can see the universe brought together by nature itself.
© Copyright 2017 Philip R. Jackson. All rights reserved.