I have always been attuned to the quality of surface, from my first work with pastel, through painting on paper, to the use of textured acrylic gels. My current body of work began in monochrome black and white at small scale. I thought of these small pieces as a sort of organic trompe l’oeil; I imagined that they were not paintings, but rather chunks of rocks or tiny mountains that I’d gathered for their evocative visual qualities. In the more recent work, there is an integration of form, surface, and color that comes together in a melding of painting and sculpture. As a self-taught abstract painter, a focus on materiality has been a guiding principle and means of access into creativity that continues to inform my practice. My work has developed through a pair of subconsciously self-imposed compositional restraints: the frequent use of the horizon line and a symmetrical approach to image-making. The horizontal division of the image plane implies the meeting of different environments, particularly in the works that suggest land- or seascape. In much of the work, a large mass or form is present in the top portion of the image; as the horizon line is bent, the form turns toward an abstracted representation of a figure in a portrait or bust presentation. These dynamics come together to imbue the paintings with a sense of spiritual presence contained and bound by the object frame. I am interested in the ideas of the object as a mediator between the person and the environment, and I am motivated by a desire to think beyond arbitrary formal categories.
~Wayson R. Jones