Robert Jessup

Gallery Affiliations: Conduit Gallery, McMurtrey Gallery, Besharat Gallery, Ober Gallery, Joseph Rickards Fine Art, Fay Gold Gallery

Region: West

In the last two years, I have increasingly overturned my assumptions about pictorial and figurative description. My pictures now are characterized by a ferocious plasticity in pursuit of subversively capricious configurations. I have tried to remove all vestiges of a calculated and crafted finish. I want all of the paint applications—the marks, strokes, scrapes, jabs,and swipes—to land like the punches of a boxer. A painting is done when the last punch lands.

I am not making abstractions or nonobjective art. The point for me is to find a picture, to invent imagery. But I don’t want to settle for easy imagistic closure. In fact, I’m trying to make images that challenge the boundaries of imagistic closure. The pictures have to arise from a battle between the charged forces of the rectangle, the impetuosity of my flailing physical self, and the persistence of my many dissatisfactions, doubts, and dreams. They must be made with equal parts deliberation and desperation.