– Jon Christopher –
The First Ten Years
of Painting
1990s – early 2000
I began painting when we moved to Long Beach, California in May of 1990, because we finally had studio space. I was in my mid-twenties and had no idea how to proceed, so I just jumped in and began painting anything I could get my hands on… furniture, silkscreen frames, recycled canvases. It took a few years but eventually I started creating work that actually looked like art. Tania and I were nothing if not enthusiastic about painting, and I was very prolific – painting two to five paintings a weekend. By the time I painted the first piece in this retrospective – “Always Merry and Bright” – I had already painted 50 of 60 canvases… and I was starting to get the feel for paint moving on the canvas.
This collection comes from a particularly prolific time, a time when I painted hundreds of pieces. What I have here for you is 26 pieces that are representative of my work during these years. You can click on the images to see them larger and read more about each piece.
Enjoy!
“Always Merry And Bright”
acrylic latex, photocopies, photo on silkscreen frames
50” x 72”
1992
During the 1990s Tania and I worked at an interior design company called Country Life. We worked in the warehouse and ran the samples department. Next door to our warehouse was a silkscreen company. One day our coworker Brian discovered that the silkscreen company would throw away old screens in the dumpster. The old silkscreens repurposed perfectly as frames for canvases. We made friends with the owner of the silkscreen company and recovered hundreds of old screens and hauled them back to our studio over the next decade. [Read More]
“Barbara Jean – After Picasso”
acrylic latex and cardboard on canvas
24” x 20”
July 1993
When I was learning to paint, to handle a paintbrush, I made some paintings by copying the masters I admired most – Cézanne, Matisse, Miro and Picasso. Doing paintings in their style helped me understand their work better, and helped lead me to my own style. [Read More]
“Picasso’s Horse”
charcoal and acrylic latex on sailcloth
22” x 19”
February 26, 1994
This painting hung in our kitchen in Long Beach for a number of years. It hung where we made coffee every morning, and often I thought about the background of this painting… [Read More]
Got the munchies?
I was inspired to make these soft sculptures out of sailcloth in March of 1994- after making little sculptures out of cardboard for several years.
I bought an old sewing machine from my mother-in-law and started sewing various things in late 1993. Being a big fan of Claes Oldenburg it was just a matter of time before my sewing would turn to making soft sculptures. [Read More]
“Waiting For The Next Disaster”
acrylic latex on cardboard, with radio
53” x 38” x 7”
November 1993
I painted this cardboard construction mounted on silkscreen frames in November of 1993, just two months before the Northridge Earthquake on January 17, 1994. I don’t know if I had a premonition or what… [Read More]
“Communion Where The Hills Have No Name”
acrylic latex on sailcloth
31.5” x 23.5”
July 24, 1993
In the Abler Collection
Influenced by Picasso and cubism – mixed with my Pop Art sensibilities, in 1993 I began to find my own style of painting by following my intuition and experimenting, experimenting, experimenting!
This piece was created during a very prolific period in the summer of that year. I was in love with moving the paint around on sailcloth, which has a different weave than canvas. Smoother and more refined, it was great for scrumbling the paint, which is a dry brush technique used to softly layer the paint. [Read More]
“Under The Shell Moon”
acrylic latex on sailcloth
50” x 36”
1994
The process of creating art in your own style is really the process of becoming yourself. I struggled with this for years, not understanding that what I was doing as an artist was further refining who I was as a person. You peel away layer by layer, slowly getting closer to heart of who you are. My art reflected this, and by the time I painted this painting I had painted well over several hundred canvases, peeling back layer after layer to get past copying my favorite artist and finding my own language. [Read More]
“Guitar”
acrylic latex, charcoal on silkscreen
50” x 36”
April 1993
In 1993 my love of Pop Art collided with my love of cubism (as I’ve mentioned in a post before) and one of the results was my guitar. I created this guitar image by doodling when I should have been working… I drew it over and over again in my sketchbook, and started painting it on canvas in April of that year. I must of painted 50-60 canvases with various versions of the image, often mixed with a cup image or a liquor store sign – more on those images in a post down the road. [Read More]