Jason Avery Kelch
b. 1975 Des Moines, Iowa
Education
University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh - Undergraduate Fine Arts 1995-1998
University of wisconsin - Fond Du Lac 1994 - 1995
Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design (MIAD) Summer Painting Workshop 1992
Exhibitions
2011 Gumps San Francisco, CA
2011 Locals Geyeserville, CA
2010 Flying Goat Healdsburg, CA
2010 Lounge Arts Gallery Jackson, MS
2009 Flying Goat Healdsburg, CA
Awards
Chancellors award for best in show, 1997 undergraduate fine art exhibition, University of Wisconsin - Oshkosh.
Collections
Forth Vineyards Healdsburg, CA
I was born in the midwest in 1975 into an artistic family. I was surrounded by books on painting, sculpture, and the history of art. I remember being fascinated by painting and drawing from a very early age. I didn't have a formal art class until high school, Which is when I really started painting. I painted all through my late teens, trying to capture the feeling of the experience I was having. I attended the University of Wisconsin in my early twenties.
At some point, I felt it was time to leave the midwest. I traveled to New Mexico and ultimately to northern California. I left painting behind for a while. I got married, started a family and became a carpenter. In the decade that followed, I didn't paint much. It was always on my mind though. I felt that there was some unifying idea that I needed to find. Something that I needed to understand before I could make the work that I really wanted to make. I also really wondered if painting was dead, a view I had heard many times,and if there was really any need for it in our new world. I wrestled with questions of what philosophic views my work was representing, what was the purpose of painting and what was its socially redeeming value.
It wasn't until 2006 that something really started to come together. A few conceptual ideas brought about a technique. This technique evolved into a framework of a painting style in which felt I could explore any subject matter while never really deviating from the overall concept. I started to make work again but it took awhile for me to really feel comfortable within this framework. Like speaking a new language, I wasn't always confident. In 2007 I had been working for a while and I realized that there was such a large amount of discovery that could happen within this framework and that really the paintings were the records of a conversation I was having with an idea.
Early in 2007 I began to show the new work. Since then I have been splitting my work time between being a builder and a painter. Trying to dig deeper into this relationship I have developed with paint. I really feel that my themes hold enough material that I could keep on making new paintings forever. And that feels pretty good.
-Jason
First, a few thoughts.
Three people walk into a room. They are each walking into a different room.
We don't really see the world. We see ourselves.
The closer you look at everything, the harder it gets to actually prove it is there at all. At some small point, everything just turns into a probability.
So, what is realism?
My paintings explore the concepts of perception, the uncertain nature of reality, and at times, mysticism. They are also about the process of making a painting. This work exists somewhere in between external, observational painting and internalized abstraction. When you try to freeze reality, it becomes untruth. I am trying to make paintings give the impression of this fluid uncertain nature. Things seem at times, to be real, to have depth, solidity. Upon closer inspection however, they fall apart into nothingness and chaos. These ideas are the unifying principles behind my work. Whatever subject that I paint, there is always that element of uncertainty. Inklings of things that cannot be explained.