User:Jefrus

Jefrus!

Artist Statement

My work at the moment is predominantly figurative painting using oil and mixed media on board or canvas. I like to use whatever is at hand and see what happens. Improvisation plays a big part in my work process, and it’s difficult to explain how this works; I’m expressing how I feel. When I begin I don’t want to know exactly where it is leading, I want to discover where the idea will take me. I enjoy watching the piece evolve and change. I put down a lot of ideas onto the surface and then leave them for a while, some of them survive and some don’t. I like this process because I know that they are there in the surface, even if you can’t see them straight away. I like being able to see the shapes of other drawings or things I’ve written hidden underneath the paint. If you look you can see inside it. The content of the work is usually based on an experience or a subject I feel strongly about, where I am creating images which are ambiguous and allow the viewer to arrive at their own meaning and interpretation. This in itself is a reflection of the process I go through in making the pieces; the meaning alters as the work progresses, it evolves as the image changes and new ideas and my own personal interpretation begins to alter and form and re-form. Sometimes the end point is unrecognisable from the start. Ultimately the meaning is not in the thing you’re looking at, it comes from within you I don’t like to explain what I think my work means. If I did, it might be taken as an authoritative answer; I don’t want there to be an answer. I see art as poetry; you take what you want from it and make your own mind up. For me, art is in itself a communication and a description of something entirely abstract and without form; the thoughts and feelings that collide and mix in whatever place our consciousness exists. Explanation will only result in miscommunication and misunderstanding. For me explanation is like trying to communicate the information in a newspaper by playing the kazoo. This is important to me because everyone sees things differently; their own experiences, prejudices, expectations and any number of personal characteristics, even the biology of their eyes shape what they see and how they respond to this. When you look at art you see a mirror, like a mirror in a carnival, but you see yourself. I often mix elements of the absurd and things seemingly out of place within the rational. I like this disharmony which is simply a reflection of how I see the world and my own unease in it. This tends to be a re-current theme in my work, as is my fascination with the human condition and the big questions of existence. My work is often described as expressing emotion and feelings. I have an affinity with the German Expressionists especially Max Beckmann and George Grosz. I also like the work of Egon Sheille, Charles Bukowski, Francis Bacon, Gustav Klimt, and contemporaries such as David Lynch, Antony Gormley, Anselm Keifer, Julian Schnabel, Marcel Dzama, and Nathan Oliveira. I have work in private collections in Glasgow, Zagreb, Berlin, Vienna, Leicester, London, Krakow, Antwerp, Villers, Turin, Milan, and Naples.