I make pictures about the madness of making pictures. Through an intensive studio practice in which forms and ideas are intuitively interposed with material experimentation, snippets of deconstructed mythological quotation, and cycling of the autographical impulse, spaces of immense psychic potentiality and raw kinetic energy emerge on canvas, paper and panel. Art for me is a spiritual discipline; it is both examination and meditation, expression and reception, a reaching backwards and forwards simultaneously: art is my hand-driven cultivation of the sacred in life.

Subjects in my work reflect my interest in the dualities and paradoxes inherent in self consciousness. Organic/amorphic and abstract forms co-habitate with figurative and representational passages, and both merge with ground and material at intuitive intersections. I see the creative process as an orchestration of elements-marks, colors, materials, and I follow my intuition above all. In this way I am much influenced by 20th century modernism-especially the canonical lineages of cubism, surrealism, and abstract expressionism. These movements were concerned with the human condition and it's modulation by the nexus of developments generally referred to as "modernity". My political consciousness informs and underlies my entire practice as much as my spiritual longing-in fact, they are symbiotic. Freedom, when all is said and done, is the ultimate goal. My work is about this longing.

My creative interests are broad and deep, and my life experience intense and myriad. I grew up on the California Coastline and late 20th century counter culture has had as much influence on my work as the historical mid century modernist heroes I absorbed in my art education (I received a B.A. from UC Santa Cruz in 2005). Experimental and electronic music, surf/skateboard culture, comic books, architecture and construction trades, pop culture and athletics, chicano culture and workers struggles, travel and commerce, science and technology are all integral aspects of my personality and experience and at times become themes in my work. Literature and history, mythology and critical theory are also important sources of inspiration. I chose art making as my profession because in it I see the opportunity to develop and synthesize all of my interests, thoughts and feelings into meaningful statements about the beauty, wonder and pain of the human experience. And when it happens, and a piece emerges that does that, it is the most rewarding thing I can conceive of.

I hope you enjoy this portfolio. Please feel free to contact me via this website if you are interested in purchasing an original, commissioning a piece, booking an exhibition, ordering a high quality giclee reproduction, or have any questions about myself and my work.

Blessings and Continuance

JQ
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