\ EXIT
Jacob Freeman
In Violet Light
January 19 - February 26, 2023
The text is an edited excerpt from a conversation with Jacob Freeman.
Day at the Studio
Typically, I wake up, drink litres of coffee, go for a run, and make a big breakfast. With all that out of the way, my brain is primed to be consumed by what I'm doing in the studio. I listen to a lot of heavy metal or techno music while I'm making art, which keeps my energy levels up and fills my painting gestures with a lot of vigour and speed. I’d start drawing and sourcing images as a warm-up; I never have a clear mission or idea when looking for images, because I always want to be open to different possibilities. Then, I touch the brush to canvas—uninterrupted all day—and it’s glorious.
Build a World, and Feed Its Inhabitants
I build a world with painting, just as what a fantasy fiction writer would do with words. The portraits I constructed thus become characters in the fictional world, with each painting investigating deeper into the backdrop, the stories, and everything around them. My world would have its own physics and rules, religions, history, spirits, heroes and monsters. Not concerned with the plot, I am dedicated to the setting and the world’s inhabitants.
All of these characters roam free in this universe that mirrors our own. In this world, the side characters are trapped in a state of constant reverberation. Here, people who might look like us have multiples of faces, vibrating in and out of each other. I see the repetition as both a compositional crux and a narrative tool, filling the picture with a stuffiness, and becoming a “hair in the soup” moment for the viewers. I want the characters to echo and resonate like a chant in a hall or void.
The Unchanging Change
Narrative structures; how belief systems and stories impact our daily lives; how people present themselves in the world in how they act and what they wear—These have always been a constant in my practice. What's changed is the exploration of materials and techniques in how to convey these concerns.
Intrigued by different art historical references over time, I'm now very deep into NASCAR garments and video game maps and avatars. Borrowing the form of traditional painting where the singular main subject takes up the center of the canvas, standing or sitting in solemn or divine fashion, I place imagined religion and spiritual symbols of this fictional world in place of such figures.
I Feel Colour; I Seek Images
Colour is a great joy in my life—it is a very intuitive thing. Only through endless repetition and getting to know myself as a painter, I start to understand colour. Use deliberate colours for certain emotions, then it becomes too contrived and obvious. You can always tell when colours are forced. I want my works to feel like they've existed in some magical space, and they've managed to jump over into this iteration of life.
I stay open to considering different images and themes in my work. I would never let a so-called bad idea that doesn’t seem to fit in my existing practice stop me from making a good painting. I don't understand “style”, nor do I stick to one path. Openness is a strength, and there’re too many exciting possibilities to paint. The practice and routine of constantly painting helps with my understanding of life, the world, and the river of knowledge that we get to share with one another.
Me and Matisse
Matisse comes from space. There's an otherworldly nature to his use of colour, shape, and form in his works, which opened a new door for painting and exploration, and continually re-invented. There's an effortlessly cool nature to the paintings—just pure love and expression. I have a deep love and respect for the soul of creativity that Matisse has. The same that Rubens has, the same that Hendrix has. They all seem to be able to tap into some otherworldly mass of intellect that frees them from this universe.
America as a Theater, and as a Mirror
American Culture has so many different facets to it that exist on opposite sides of the spectrum of good and evil. I’m interested in American media, particularly how the country portrays itself within its rituals. There is a certain grandiose flamboyant theatrical nature to how America tells its tales and how itself identifies with others. Everything is so large and over the top, and everything must be about exponential growth. Canada is more reserved and denounces the loudness of America but we secretly revel in the excitement of American culture. America for Canada is both a window and a mirror.
“
It is above all by the imagination that we achieve perception and compassion and hope." — Ursula K. LeGuin
If we can speak broadly, the arts serve as a reflection of society, as well as the source inspiring it. This creates a positive feedback loop, in which society is built on. The creative impulse is the deepest human truth.
If we can speak narrowly, good painting to me is a visual celebration of the profound nature of life, and a way to understand oneself and one another. I can only speak for myself, and it is my hope that I can be one small part of a giant sea of creative discourse.
In Violet Light
“In Violet Light” borrows the title of a music album of the Canadian rock band The Tragically Hip. Violet light is on the end of the visible colour spectrum and is the first colour that appears to humans. The exhibition title points to feelings of the colour of the sky in twilight as the sun has set and serves as this transitional period of light between night and day.
Through found images and stories, legends, and myths that exist within our own histories and belief systems, I built an imagined world, a liminal space for viewers—here, we are visited by ghosts, floating wearables, avatars, monsters, and side characters. The paintings on view are rooted in the appropriation and transmutation of tales found in popular culture, which influences human experience in and outside the imagined alternative universe.
Violet stands as a metaphor of an introduction to the visible and invisible, the known and unknown—between reality and fantasy. Much like how art and painting can be used as this introduction between imagination and existence, intuition and logic—for both the practitioner and the observer.
About the Artist
Jacob Freeman (b. 1994) is a Canadian artist based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Jacob obtained his BFA with honors from the University of Western Ontario in 2016. Fascinated by painting’s long history, he uses the medium as a means to build an alternative world and its inhabitants, where its own physics, rules, religions, history, and spirits define the cultural sphere of the imagined land. He develops an ongoing narrative about the poetic structure of nature, and to explore how the appropriation and transmutation of historical tropes and motifs lead contemporary painting to unfamiliar aesthetic spaces. Freeman draws from the iconography of American culture, and investigates how the costume and performance endemic to the region relate to Christianity and historical painting.
Freeman previously held exhibitions at galleries including This Month Only, Toronto; Race Car Factory, Indianapolis; Abbozzo Gallery, Toronto; Art Gallery of Mississauga, Mississauga; Forest City Gallery, London, CA. He has won the “Best In Show” award at the Quest Art 13th Annual Juried Exhibition, Quest Art, Midland, ON.
Photo by Nick Freeman
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