JEREMY WILLIS ARTIST STATEMENT
Late one night, approaching a blank canvas, my shadow fell on the clean, white gesso. It was winter of 2020.. In a moment where everything felt adrift, the light above me located me in space. I looked at the light and I looked at the shadow it cast, recognizing that I was the space in between the two. My new paintings all come from this moment. Light defines everything around us, it provides us with a sense of importance, elevation, and clarity. The sun, the moon, stage lights, the illumination of video (or film), the flash of a camera; all call us to attention.
My paintings of shadows and of lights directed toward the viewer examine self- location and self-importance. Framing devices and elements of trompe l’oeil expose the object nature of the painted surface and remind the viewer of their own physicality. Meanwhile, the luminous washes of paint nod to the sublime. We look out of ourselves towards the mysterious and the beautiful but we are always tethered by the limitations of our psyche and our mortality. These paintings explore that tension.
Our hyper- capitalist culture of vain celebrity progresses blithely in the face of plague, war, genocide, and systemic social collapse. As things fall apart, human beings inevitably find themselves screaming, “But what about me?!?” The implicit futility of this question never seems to detract from its poignance. These paintings suggest that, in this apocalyptic narcissism, we can find great compassion, understanding, utility, and wonder.