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name
John Gleason
media
painting, drawing, installation
education
Colorado State University
BA Arts and Humanities, 1997
Florida State University
MFA Studio Art, 2006
web page
The rose has been evoked throughout history in paradoxical ways, being at once a symbol for life, death, fertility, resurrection, passion, suffering, Venus, Christ, and the cosmos. Although there are risks of speaking second-hand truths and of a loss of objectivity when using traditional symbolic forms, I’ve chosen the rose to articulate figuratively my own questions regarding modern notions of salvation versus self-enlightenment, faith versus esoteric initiative, sublime truths versus human constructs.
This figurative use of the rose emerged from the act of drawing on the floor and walls of my studio space. The drawing illustrated a network of roses in struggle with invasive vines. Blending visual determinacy and intuition, the work evolved into a walk-in environment of latex house paint and #2 pencil in which organic form grows within hard-edged shafts of light. Rose and vine grow outwards towards saffron rays from the same source in the center of the room, while in certain tangled passages the individual identity of the two species becomes ambiguous. Both the process and final work probes the fine line between orthodoxy and cultism, while problematizing a generalized use of light as metaphor.