Compelling illusions
August 2, 2016
Bubble Gum Geometry
November 8, 2016
Christopher St. John
Where Grasses Grow Over Me
Nov 2 - Dec 7 2016. Opening Nov 10. 6-8PM
Christopher St. John lives and works in Portland, Oregon. His work touches on the impact of place on the shape of our lives, the vocabulary of form, the figure, and the joy of impermanence. For many years, St. John’s figurative work chronicled the self-destructive urges that seem to be consuming citizens as a nation. “I worked to craft a figurative gestalt that I felt revealed the essence of that despair, that nervous frenzy, that queer dislocation that pervades everything in this country; a country which has been at war since 2001,” explained St. John.
Having the desire to free his work, Christopher St. John’s most recent works move the focus into light and into a place where he can play with color and form and space.
“As Debussy wrote, sound and color should be adequate to express ideas, and I simply wish to be free as possible to move in light and in love,” says St. John. “The darkness will always have its place. When I first began painting, it was abstract art that initially called me, and at this stage in my life I find it to be a welcome friend and a return to home.”