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Artifactory is proud to announce Jonathon Blake as the winner of the "When Lightning Strikes Contest." Blake will be exhibiting at Ico Gallery in "Heat," taking place from July 7th - 31st, 2010. He is a true visionary and also a marketing genius. Blake paints while on stage with renowned musicians from around the country. When painting, he utilizes the energy from the band and audience, and creates his psychedelic compositions that offer a visual analysis of the music he is hearing, and gives an immediate creative feedback loop to the musicians. This reciprocal arrangement causes Blake to look beyond his subconscious for inspiration, and the musicians to seek outside influence. He has built up his audience by exhibiting at traditional galleries throughout the US, but has also built up a vast portion of his patrons by traveling extensively and by selling artwork directly to his fans at his live painting events.
Blake explains that his paintings come from an intersubjective and communal spirit that has, at many times flowed out of or around a love of music, specifically psychedelia and improvisation. These are scenes which center around a principle of abundance, perhaps even excess: excess of feeling and emotion, excess of openness, and excess of receptivity to the surrounding world. It is this context that Blake's work grows out of and that is concretized in his paintings. His works are, to put it succinctly, works of excess, but not negatively as in "excessive", but rather positively as in "abundant" or even yet, "teeming." Indeed, this is the idea of community. A number of disparate elements, often contradictory ones, that are assembled together to work towards unitary goals.
This Is What Love Looks Like, Acrylic on Canvas, 2008
Jonathon Blake's profile can be found here.
Robert Berry
Senior Curator
Ico Gallery |
