Jonathan Purvis -

There is no set theme to my display of artworks. These Artworks are expressing my journey through my artmaking career. A lot of my works were made during the pandemic leading to some more unwanted feelings. I have tried to encompass many feelings that accompanied this pandemic such as helplessness, feeling trapped, and plain ol boredom. I want the viewer of these pieces to understand and interpret these pieces their own way and maybe relate it to their own quarantined experience.

For the most part, my works of art such as “Rings of Despair”, “Checkmate” and “Stuck in Wonderland'' consist of 3-Dimensional sculptures and projects involving the use of materials such as wood and epoxy resin.The piece “Checkmate” was probably my most difficult work. Creating the lattice for it was easy but filling all of the small gaps that epoxy could pour through was infuriating, but a great experience to learn. My objective in creating “Checkmate” was as practice for making a gift for my sister's birthday and was also representative of the feeling of boredom I was experiencing and hoping to recreate. “Rings of Despair” on the other hand was my first, and was created during the thick of the pandemic resulting in large amounts of negative feelings, and so my idea was to create something ‘dead’ out of something ‘alive’, and thus I arrived at a Skull. My idea for the skull changed many times and ultimately ended up as an alien to make it feel more foriegn. This foreign feeling is something that we have all experienced during this pandemic and that was what I was capturing. I continued to have a similar thought process when creating “Stuck in Wonderland''. The name of these works is very important as it accentuates the actual art pieces and allows the viewer to reflect on their time stuck in this pandemic. The idea behind the creation of mushrooms was because I wanted it to have a poisonous aura. I used Epoxy resin to create bright colors to show that safe feeling yet there's a hidden poison to it like Poison Dart Frogs. My piece “summer”, is the opposite of previous pieces, it's much more light hearted and carries my feelings for a bright summer. It has the bright blue color for water, keeping the piece as a whole bright and cheerful.

“Checkmate” is my largest and most difficult piece so it's settled in the background to give it a grand appearance. I placed “Rings of Despair” and “Stuck in Wonderland” in front to make it appear as though the skull is sitting in a patch of mushrooms and forgotten in some place.