Jonathan Lewis

My work is a contradiction of itself. All of my pieces are very minimalist to the eye at first glance. My palette is not very broad as there is often only one color and a shade of black. I also tend to use one to two mediums. For my collection of pieces I call “Clouds”, which are a series of watercolor paintings with each containing a larger area on a white piece of watercolor paper with various hand drawn images in the middle as a focal point. All of the images, however, are accompanied by a stream of black sharpie ink pouring out of them and flowing freely on the page. Formally, this may be very minimalist, but when the viewer has a chance to process the work in front of them, they are often confronted by a rush of thoughts: “What is the reasoning for this particular image? This color? What does that stream of black represent? Does it represent something negative? Positive?”

My work makes people think. With every piece I have done this year I wanted my viewer to stop, look, analyze and interpret. Another goal I have with my art is to make the viewer do all of the above while using as limited resources as possible. Growing up in such a big and urban city I’ve been exposed to a vast amount of art. Although I believe the art that I see daily (which consists of various types of graffiti such as Bombs, Throw-Ups, Tags and much more, all done with not many colors or mediums) is beautiful, someone who is from a more suburban environment may not interpret that art the same way. That dilemma prompts another goal of mine while making art which is to incorporate the minimalistic stylings of street art, such as only a small palette of colors and one medium (either markers or spray paint) in a beautiful way that isn’t just symbols such as letters and numbers, but thought provoking imagery which bridges a gap between one culture and the rest of the world.

Additionally, my focus has also remained the same throughout these previous years of art making, although the mediums I’ve chosen to work with have changed. My first piece was a painting of a Brooklyn rapper Teka$hi 6ix9ine that isn’t on display and although there isn’t any form of graffiti styled work in the entitled, “Teka$hi” piece, I still had the intentions of introducing a person who is a part of the New York street culture to those who might not be familiar with him through my art, as stated earlier to “...bridge(s) a gap between one culture and the rest of the world.”

My reasoning for my placement of works was deliberate. My biggest piece was placed in the middle because I wanted it to sort of represent the beginning of a story. Due to the fact that most of my work shares the same black stream of ink. The other pieces with streams of ink were placed on top and to the right of this piece, however, I made sure to not put them too close to each other because I didn’t want them to be conceived as one piece. I wasn’t too worried about putting the “Yellow Head” piece too close to the centerpiece because although similar techniques were used to form this piece they look slightly different. In a way they look like inverted forms of one another as one has more black than the other and vice versa. Lastly, I chose to hang my “Numbers” piece near the center because it provides a bit of symmetry to the exhibit and provides an even distribution of art on the entire wall.