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The Landscape of Flesh and Emotion
I believe for a person to truly feel a painting, an artist needs to be a fearless seeker of truth. To reveal the honesty of emotion within ones subject. When I paint I try to feel the emotions at its deepest level, then allow those feelings to merge with the pigments on my brush and seep into the surface of my work. In this way, I believe people go beyond simply seeing my work, but instead they feel it. Allowing it to trigger their own life memories. Thus the viewer and the subject morph into something new on an organic level.
I seldom touch on happy times. To paraphrase Tolstoy, 'all happy people are the same.' What truly makes us individuals is how we feel as we pursue or loose love. Our greatest works in art, music, cinema have to due with longing for love, and pursuit for that person who turns our world inside out. The flip side of that is when the story takes that tragic turn and we are moved to attempt to reconcile or regain love first gained then lost. Within this realm each person is governed differently my the mind, heart and soul. Often these three elements of the self are at odds regarding how to best achieve the end goal—to taste love one more time.
Duane
Kirby Jensen is a painter and a poet. He was inspired to paint as a
child while he watched his grandmother and grandaunt paint scenes of
their Stanwood, WA community. He comes from a long line of painters,
photographers, carvers, inventors and storytellers.
He has
been called an ‘outsider artist.’ His work is part magical
realism mixed with, what he refers to as emotional realism,
preferring to stay away from stylistic labels. His work centers on
the gravity of emotion and the fragility of identity and the ease in
which it might be lost. His work evokes those emotions that linger
beneath the surface that underscore the narrative line being explored
within each painting. His artistic vision is not hemmed in by
traditional northwest subject matter.
As a poet,
he has read at numerous venous throughout the northwest since the
early 1990’s. During that decade he published Everett’s
Independent Voice (an arts and entertainment magazine) and The
Drifter: A Poetry Journal. He also coordinated the Mill Town
Poets Open-mic. His work travels along a narrative line that often
explores the individuals relationship with the modern word and the
call of nature that tugs at instinct which lays - almost dormant -
waiting to explore new territory.
Duane
Kirby Jensen is an Everett, WA based poet and artist.
*** For a list of exhibits and publications please see News, Notes & Articles.
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