Artist Statement
CVWhat do the front bumper of a 1967 Volkswagen Bug, an abandoned motel, and a rusting roadside business sign have in common? To most of us, they’re just remnants—dusty, man-made artifacts of a bygone era. To Jason Kowalski, though, they’re beautiful and inextricable features of the American landscape, and he honors these objects and places with skilled and careful brushstrokes. In fact, Jason not only has a painterly reverence for his subjects, but also a personal reverence for the stories their nuanced and time-weathered patinas, colors, and reflections tell. On their surfaces—in fact, even beneath them, in the forms of collaged vintage newspaper clippings, catalog pages, and magazine ads—his paintings celebrate iconographic Americana. In the tradition of classically trained American Realists, Jason remains faithful to his representations, but with an always alluring and sometimes playful nostalgia for a simpler time. His close, yet non-obsessive, attention to detail is what allows us to see the VW’s dented chrome bumper and to imagine hearing its sputtering engine; to view the arid landscape and to almost feel its ambient heat; and to recognize the abandoned gas station and to smell the far away fumes that once permeated its uniformed attendants’ hands. In this way, Jason’s paintings are both affirmations and invitations—remembrances of the Great American Road Trip and provocations of our sensory memories from its forgotten outposts. So, looking into a Jason Kowalski painting, and not just at one, subverts our very notions of beauty, memorabilia, and collectability. If we’re lucky, we may own a Jason Kowalski painting. The wood, the canvas, the paper, and the oils can belong to us, but the subjects Jason paints belong only to time. And this is why Jason paints, and why we can be thankful that he will continue to paint.
Mike Stice
Author, Wolfgang Bloch: The Colors of Coincidence (Chronicle Books, 2008)
Former Professor, Laguna College of Art + Design
Former Arts Commissioner, City of Laguna Beach
