Jake Ehrlund
Artist's Statement
What is vision?
What is thought?
What is language?
What is destination?
This is Painting.
Every time I approach a painting the canvas poses its own series of questions, like an equation to be solved. You don’t always solve the equation correctly, but that doesn’t mean you got the wrong answer either. Mistakes just bring you to an entirely new equation that was impossible to predict.
I would describe these equations as tumultuous conversations; an intense dialogue with the painting. It is never the artists monologue; as the painting is alive as you are. Thus the goal is to keep the painting alive by taking intuitive and intelligent chances, all the while learning to advance with your mistakes.
It is this involved process that makes painting so compelling to me. It is philosophical, spiritual and psychological in every sense. It is more revealing and biographical than any of these silly words I compose. It is highly subjective and reflective; a chance for the viewer to find a relationship with the previously unknown. My intent is to force the viewer to begin his own dialogue with the outside world, rather than continue to engage in the monologues of victimization and materialism that we so easily fall into. It is about exposing my own humanity in hopes that others will find their own.
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Education
2002-2004 Ringling School of Art and Design, FL
2004-2006 BFA School of Visual Arts, NY
Exhibitions
2006 Minority Report, Flood Gallery, NC
2006 Senior Show/ Open Studios, School of Visual Arts, NY
2005 Part One: Jake Ehrlund & James Tribble, Chelsea NY
2005 Myth Transformed, Visual Arts Gallery, Chelsea NY
2003-2004 Avant-Garde student/faculty show, FL
2003-2004 Annual ASID Show House, FL
2004 Coexistence Banner Finalist, FL
