Artist Statement

Artist Statement for Ganton Gallery

As an abstract painter I am trying to make a captivating image. I need a “hook” to grab the attention of a passer bye and hold it long enough for a grain of interest to settle in.
If you are willing to be captivated then you have taken the hook and the painting draws you in and you become interested in it.
I am the type of artist that is concerned with beauty. I use color and composition to make a painting attractive but not at the expense of the ideas and concepts. Beauty, for my purposes, reflects the beauty of the ideas and concepts themselves.
Our world is filled with dynamic and interesting relationships. I am drawn specifically to the relationships that we have with the landscape and those things that impose upon the landscape. I imagine something of a chain reaction when thinking about these relationships. Every individual manifestation of change whether from nature or acted out by man is connected to a series of sympathetic changes or reactions. Constant change and an endless variety of relationships within our world is the backdrop, the root idea or concept behind these abstract paintings.
I use a variety of techniques and materials to create a sense of movement throughout the painting. Movement around the canvas and from front to back where the viewer becomes aware of a layered, transparent composition is the goal. This layered effect is a visual tool I devised to illustrate constant change and interplay of compositional elements.
The end result I am aiming for is for the work to feel like an unfolding event.
Just like my subject matter, constantly changing and shifting relationships, the relationship the viewer has with the painting should also be a dynamic one.
-Justin Homer Jackson

My paintings, in a broad definition, are very much about what I think the “world of ideas” looks like.
My world of ideas includes historical perspectives of art as well as personal perspectives.
I am an artist who has an appreciation for our Earths’ landscape, and I tell stories about it in my paintings. These lyrical, motif laden landscapes are the platforms and pages for my visual vernacular, my thoughts and ideas.

I think about the method of painting, the physicality of it, the variable textures, colors and shapes. How each variable within a painting lends individuality, but at the same time, blends into the broader whole, is an attempt I make at describing the complexities of any relationship.

My desire is to create images that produce a myriad of responses from the viewer while being deep and interesting formal art objects that are also strangely attractive or beautiful.
-JHJ

Old Version

The question commonly asked of abstract art is: “What does it mean?”
The painting means to exist as a representation of my thoughts and the translation of my actions during the event of its conception.
My thoughts run the whole of my experience as an artist. In each new painting I draw from my previous works, my education, and a great deal from my personal experience of the natural world. The landscapes of the Midwest and the urbanscapes of its cities, specifically Chicago’s, of which I have become particularly familiar, have become a fertile and abundant subject of my work.

When working I allow myself to shift the perspective from which I am painting, as a rule, or as a deliberate, constant practice. This may be similar to Cubism or Futurism, but not limited to a single subject. I try to communicate a sense of space through natural (biomorphic) and geometric tension. The problem of the biomorphic-geometric relationship – that of the rigid forms of human production with the harmonic undulation of the land – is precisely the preoccupation of my paintings. I am concerned with the city and the rural landscape’s dichotomous yet perceived codependency.
The relationships I strive to paint are balanced, if precariously, on a constantly shifting plane of multiple perspectives. This is consistent with a conversation that occurs on many levels, about the relationship between the natural world and the one we are manufacturing out of it through industry and technology.

I am painting the world in flux. Very little in the world is static, rather, everything changes and influences its surroundings. I do not lock myself into a singular perspective when making art. I enjoy following the dynamic rule of nature.
-JHJ

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or comments regarding my work.