Jon Eckel has situated himself in the Western tradition of painting. We can see him charging through the twentieth century, picking up and discarding painterly forms. The expressiveness of Max Beckman meets the artistry of Willem DeKooning. The mark making of Susan Rothenberg and the new image work of Philip Guston run with the simplicity of Henri Matisse.
There are archetypes here: the prophet, the desirous male, the king and queen, the artist at work, and the mother and child. These are archetypes in the sense of images that are the language of visual culture. We can see the struggle in the process of making a painting. The integrity of the image is at odds with its own decomposition. There is enjoyable evidence of the detritus, the castaway ideas and bits, barely visible within the work. At times the solid geometry is disturbed by the almost irrational figure. The small touches are quite wonderful: the partial transparencies, the flat shapes that give way to volume, the wings and smoke that form faces. It is this willingness to crash his own structures, his own party, which speaks of Eckel’s courage and curiosity as a painter. He seems to have the ability to let loose his subconscious, and then restrain it with formal visual devices. These paintings are clearly not illustrations. They use the language of paint to convey what cannot be written, yet in a sense they are also both a single statement and an entire novel.
These paintings take time to be ingested visually. Some of the interiors have a disjointed quality. The space has developed fissures, opening up into multiple viewpoints and dimensions. The lighting is constantly changing, as are the perspective viewpoints and painterly lenses. The objects shift with grace and ease from flat to modeled to transparent and from painted surface to drawn line. The flatness of the figures creates a sense of subtle humor. It seems as if Eckel translates a love of cartoons through the screen of twentieth-century Modernism. Occasionally we see the painter’s self-portrait in these works, as well. The artist exhibits a naive wonder about life while he views the world and takes notes. This serves as good advice for us all!
- Richard Metz 3/07
Richard Metz is a visual artist, educator, and art critic. He has written several reviews for Inliquid.com. He received his MFA from Maine College of Art in 2000. He currently teaches art at Abington Senior High School, just outside Philadelphia.
Artist's Statement
I have always been intrigued by the subconscious, that inner drive of which we have no real control. Through the years I have witnessed this force emerge, at times shocking and embarrassing, while at other times poignant and utterly beautiful. In my most recent paintings I am dealing solely with this aspect of creation.
Like a religion I have faith that the paint will perform a miracle, making those who look upon it believers. This can be a very frustrating ordeal, and almost every painting comes to a point somewhere along the process where I consider burying it and never telling anyone where. In this grave is where that life force of creation lies, when one moment you could give up entirely, the next minute you are awakened to the imagery and its purpose. You know what it must be and that what was once a mistake is now the lungs with which the painting breathes.
I do not consider myself a figure painter, though recently the figure appears in every work. The attachment to the figure stems from my desire to communicate and relate to others. I want to tell stories. I want to create worlds. I want to use visual imagery as a symbolic language that is not literal but definitely powerful and emotionally understandable. I believe that creating art is a mystical endeavor and not to be taken lightly.