Jon Manteau

Jon Manteau, Prelude to SkyLand

Artist’s Statement

Prelude to SkyLand is a preview solo-exhibition, sponsored by LG Tripp Gallery, with a much larger, exhibition to follow in the spring 2019, at a different “pop-up” location, in Philadelphia, PA. The location of which is yet to be determined. Stay tuned… This exhibition consists of three different themes, connected by the notion of a place called SkyLand.

SkyLand, a place where your dreams and nightmares come true, where metaphor and reality collide, where fact is fiction, fiction fact, both beautiful and hideous, love and death, light and dark.

(Sky Land- is an actual location, a cabin/hotel complex located on Skyline Drive in Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park,; at it’s highest elevation of 3680 feet)

“Make America…..” a portion of a slogan, for our audience to interpret as they see fit. The works in this series were constructed from my collection of hand-painted “Americana”.

“For Jagger’s Bedroom”, paintings made for my fictional son, Jagger.
My art works have always been my children, but at 55…I often wonder what having a child might have been like?

All three series are connected “formally and or conceptually” by my never ending interests in- mark making, leaving one’s mark (from my graffiti-roots), history and or the historical (“History of the Mark “and “Philadelphia Historical Artifacts” being the titles of 2/3 of my last solo exhibitions in 2008 and 2014 with LG Tripp Gallery) stripe painting (because that’s what I actually am a “Stripe Painter”. I wear that proudly on my sleeve!! I will always be indebted to Sean Scully…for his influence on me as a young art student at Parsons, back in the very early 1980’s). It was said, more than once at my last solo exhibition in 2014-”why doesn’t he just paint…?” I found that very perplexing because that’s what I’ve always done. It wasn’t lost on me, that what they meant was….”he’s essentially a “Formalist”…why this seemingly new found “Post-Conceptualism”? Well…that’s for our audience to ponder.

Download Resumé