SOMETHING ABOUT MEMORIES OR DREAMS

The intention was to try something more magical, more surreal. Something inspired - although not necessarily similar to - the creative works that I’ve found myself most drawn to recently. Mostly work that is at least a little - if not completely - nonsensical, with shades of humor balanced by a pervasive strangeness. I’ll spare my viewers a philosophy lecture, but there is something deeply meaningful about artwork that doesn’t always add up. The same goes for art that’s too whimsical to be reality.

The lyricism of early Phish albums (Junta, Picture of Nectar), the magical realism of any writing by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and of course Borges’ Labyrinths. The films of David Lynch - which need no explanation because you can’t anyways. Also Hemingway - although far less strange and surreal, but overwhelmingly poignant, and beautiful in its leanness. He reminds me to keep the syntax simple because eloquence does not have to be too complicated. I’ve also been watching a lot of Paul Thomas Anderson - I don’t know what his films have to do with these paintings, but I’ve no doubt they're in there somehow. I won't claim to have made anything quite as profound as these artists have - I wasn't really trying to - but it's what I've been getting my kicks from.

So figures have emerged - or invaded - into a space previously inhabited by pure, non-representational abstraction. The typical dynamics are still at play: order and chance, sophistication and clumsiness, forms that are obvious, tight, and/or recognizable in contrast to ambiguity, distortion, and elusiveness. But now there are words being put over the music - it’s not all instrumental jazz anymore. It’s not only structured composition tangled with improvisation. Now there’s just barely a description of a kinesthetically relatable space - it even has a body in it!

What do they do? They make me curious. They make me wonder. Usually, the body is my daughter - that curious little character who bounces around investigating one thing or another as she accidentally figures out how our world works. Maybe I wanted to make paintings I find as curious as she finds literally everything. There are also a couple of animals - and my wife. Sometimes I find them curious too.

I learned as much if not more about making art over the decade I spent working as a cook than I did from all my art schooling. Sometimes work in one medium is most easy to grasp by looking at work in other formats. When was the last time you asked what a plate of food meant? Hopefully never. If you did, you missed the point.

I don’t know what these paintings are about, because they aren’t about anything. They never are, and never have been. Their function is to generate feelings and affect by giving us something to taste, and to make us wonder - not to provide answers.

-JNC, 2021