Jon Aley Interview by Joy Kocmoud 08/11/2010
 
Accomplished artist Jon Aley has seen successful in a variety of venues. Here, in his own words, he shares his thoughts and ideas about how his work has continued to evolve over the years.
 
"My first memory of my own personal work was when I was perhaps 6 or so as I drew a tree on the family piano, which did not sit well with the parents," said Aley. "I grew up on a farm in Missouri and the beauty of the area and the land has always stayed with me in my work."
 
"I started drawing a lot in high school. I continued this as I entered the world. I took a few figure drawing classes to get started, and the drawings I did there got me accepted into the Kansas City Art Institute. There I received a BFA in Design and a minor in Art History, specifically Italian Renaissance work. All the while I was painting like a madman just for the sheer joy of the act."
 
"The instructors and the admissions panel were amazed because I was naturally drawing like early Picasso, the Cubists, Paul Klee and Francis Bacon."
 
"I was amazed at their amazement because, having grown up a little isolated and undereducated in the arts, I had no idea who these people were or what their work looked like. I was young and had just seen my first NC Wyeth show. I wanted to be like him and some really great comic book artists, such as Bill Sienkiwicz and Dave McKean, but who I was just didn't end up looking that way."
 
"I obtained my degree for practical reasons while moonlighting with Japanese brushes and plenty of paint in many forms. I was always really prolific and during all of this I was also doing sculpture."
 
"My father was always a builder. For years half of my income came from some form of sculpture or metalwork that fit into real world applications such as giant carrot signs, wrought iron work for Arcosanti, various set designs and props for all sorts of theaters. Some of my favorite works at the time were brico collages that hopped between 2-d and 3-d."
 
"A lot of them were in Braille books. I found my first ones while working on the play ‘The Helen Keller Story'."
 
"Someone in the administration heard I was painting in Braille books and he gave me something like 15 copies of the holy bible and the encyclopedia, which turned into beautiful stories on top of the texture."
 
"After having numerous small shows and working as a freelance contractor, I returned for my masters at Prescott College in filmmaking. I continued my freelance work from there and expanded my base to include shooting and editing films and documentaries."
 
"My discovery of film offered a nice balance or counter for painting. Film has a certain level of community involved in the act itself, plus a certain amount of things that pre-exist and require framing to bring them to an audience. Painting, on the other hand, requires one to start from a blank surface. Anything you put down in that space has a near absolute level of responsibility as it literally is built from zero to something from you and your senses and mind. It comes very much from the inside out. There are exceptions of course, but my way of working makes painting a very internal, very personal act."
 
"Painting and film allow me to convey most clearly ideas which are important to me."
 
"I find painting a necessary counterbalance in my life," said Aley. "It brings me to a core of creativity that is very different from my other mediums and somehow that core fills me with abundance."
 
"The place I am working from is somewhere between an idea, a texture, a movement, a time, a place, a feeling that we all have and occasionally notice."
 
"My work walks a line between a visual representation of an object or narrative and expressing its physical qualities. Although it does carry a sense of place, my work is not landscape. I splice components from different experiences and times at contrasting angles to create a whole new sense of place and space. The lines and planes cause movement creating a narrative quality."
 
"Pretend you are walking and it starts to rain. The rain becomes more intense, jerking your umbrella, which you pull close obscuring your vision ahead of you. Your senses are raw, you hear (hearing pounds the eardrum but also creates the sense of a picture in the mind) and feel pounding wind on your face, bringing tears, your muscles are engaged and active lest the umbrella be pulled away and you smell more of everything around you because the moisture opens it all up to be felt."
 
"Just for a second, you are able to tilt the umbrella and peer out to see the most beautiful series of moments as nature dances before you, all your senses forgetting just for a moment they are separate, then it is gone as you smile that you caught it, the wholeness of everything, for just a second. The rain stops, your guard is down and there you know what it feels like to want to hold onto that moment forever, you know what it is to be human."
 
"Quietly, you realize the words you think in that moment are only slightly suitable to describe the experience. Talking about any artwork can be difficult to say the least because at the end of the process we are using words or paint to describe or trigger another type of experience entirely."
 
"As far as my painting process goes, I am a gatherer and form my relationships in advance from pieces of the world and my senses. I build by bringing the initial ideas and concerns with me then I move them back and forth like waves finding their necessary companions until I finally feel like I am embodying the feeling or concept I was pursuing."
 
"The thought process is a combination of ideas that inspire me or effect me. An example would be making a painting that feels, not just looks or contains a funny idea. From there I take a few pieces and start moving them around until I feel like I am discovering something or have let go and am finding something good. Then I keep coming back and emphasizing those pieces in part by encouraging the movement or depth within a piece. I walk to different angles and push it till it forms a kind of extra dimensions in the peripheral and within the story relationships."
 
"When I feel like I can't afford to break it any more, then it is usually done. I try to make sure that discovery, like subconscious findings such as exploding dandelions for example, are very present while at the same time clearly placing logical elements. These pieces that I find are usually very, very clearly in my life, in the past, present, or future. It is sometimes odd recognizing these fragments."
 
"I was always like this," said Aley. "I think that label fits retrospectively in some way. It comes from finding the community we most identify with and attempt to fit into or find ourselves participating in."
 
Aley finds inspiration in a myriad of places, including other artists.
 
"I am attempting to do something I am not sure I am capable of in the paintings, which is what I tend to do. I am trying to set up another level of vernacular which involves sensory experience and memory/deep feeling experience. It is something
 
I came across in two specific works and a big part of why I think painting is only beginning to be mined for its potential. The first is Mark Rothko's work. When I first saw his work, I thought, ‘That is pretty, quiet, calming.'"
 
"Weeks later, I realized that literally everything about what I was doing and how it had changed. His color usage had a profound effect on me and effected me very emotionally. The bottom fell out of my work and I went a lot deeper into it. Funny how you think you have some idea of the limits of something then an event like that occurs and you realize just how surface you were or how limited your experience was."
 
"Another influence was Kandinsky. Though he is not my favorite, I was on a gallery tour with a teacher and when I looked at one of his later pieces, I suddenly felt depressed and I had no reason to. It was dominantly pink with some moving lines and some planes, no figures or other real content. I asked if there would be a reason to feel what I was feeling and she said a lot of his work from that period dealt with color and emotions. That kind of effect is amazing, especially if there is some way of conveying and inspiring consciousness through a work. Not a basic message like ‘vote democrat', rather something deeper and more moving."
 
Aley's philosophical interests include naturalists David Abram, Diane Ackerman and Farley Mowat, semiologists such as Jaques Lacan, Roland Barthes and Jean-Paul Sarte, as well as phenomenologists Edmund Husserl and Jim Ruddy.
 
"Anything that explores perception, language and nature generally holds great appeal for me. Early Chinese and Eastern philosophies effected me early on in my life and still can be seen floating on the peripheral of the work."
 
"I am an avid fan of physics as well and find various theories in the field inspiring and augmenting my work, most central of which revolve around the birth and understanding of the universe, dark matter and the formation and movement of stars."
 
"Nature itself is the core of what I study through my work. The colors, smells and sounds around me pop in and out of my pieces as they would on a hike in the mountains or walk through a city."
 
"Human nature is an ongoing theme as well, humor and humanity struggling with one another continually, psychology and the learning process continually evolving and hopefully sharing the spark to seek, know and grow."
 
Here, Aley describes one of his latest pieces, "Crucifix or Good Nights Sleep".
 
"I really loved a certain someone. It happens to the best of us. To a degree it was rare for me. When you are really there, it puts one on the cross, shakes beliefs and destroys who you are. It brings a lot of growth, but can also throw you off your center. You lose your home in yourself, when at the end of the day, that energy should have been concentrated on yourself. A woman's ass, in the right hands, is a dangerous thing."
 
"Really, it's a weapon, which is dangerous in the wrong hands. The only way home is finding your nature and regaining your sense of true self and purpose."
 
"The choice becomes, crucifixion (a rush if you ask me, a challenge, a hero for a moment, a touch of god coursing through your veins), or a good night's sleep. The female figure I left in black and white because it is a striking contrast from the world of color which sometimes blends and is hard to separate. If you focus on the sections of blue gently, all three at once, soft focus, you will see the piece spring in and out."
 
"Letting go a little bit, this can create a feeling of floating, as the idea of crucifixion usually walks hand in hand with transcendence, the lower right corner being water as being carried away, the upper left being sky the crucifix figures arms taking flight even though I worked to make his flesh ground-like. Visually stepping back just a little bit further, I built a cross into the piece using the three patches of pink and three patches of blue. This dimensional cross, due to its movement in and out, becomes organic - almost breathing. The multiple houses (and roofs) in the piece refer to the body as a container which we slip from in these moment believing ourselves immortal. Finally, The bright orange tree glowing with life and in my vernacular, it is associated with loyalty is sometimes so fierce and passionate that you have to let go entirely, death transformation, sacrificing yourself and your relationship that you both might grow rather than struggle."
 
"It is only a recent understanding that people don't quite see the same as me, it is sort of like an expanded vision or a vision that hasn't quite been perceived yet. The text for crucifix mentions the pushing and pulling of the dimensional cross that I put in there using angled bits of blue and pink which if you let go of your focus and look at them softly will pop out and become physical, one of the problems with what I am doing is that people see only one level of it and miss the bigger picture entirely."
 
Aley offers the following advice for struggling artists:
 
"Read books that are atypical can help us have a greater voice and place in the world. Books that help us grow up and take a lot more responsibility for ourselves, our values, our damage and lives in general. You have to ask how rich the work is going to be if you keep going around in the same desperate circles your whole life."
 
"That gift or aspect of our personality that makes us do this stuff, it doesn't change, won't go anywhere no matter what you think. Recognize your weak areas and focus on those so that you can clear a pathway to fulfilling the artistic part of your personae, don't even care what this looks like."
 
"There is a lot to be said for taking a simple humble job to get by. Humility is the most necessary quality of all. At the same time, get educated on money, saving, community, giving and communication, even if any of these are awkward."
 
"You must let these parts grow so the work can grow too. Escapism can only produce a limited body of work."