Jacob Rowan Studios

Here are some images from my recent show at Belhaven University. The show will be open until March 25th, 2020.

Edificial Epistemologies. 2012-Present. Dimensions variable

  Detail from Edificial Epistemologies. 2012-Present. Dimensions variable

  Unfinished Edifice. 2020. 36″18″

  Detail from Study for Eudoxia. 2020. 42″x19′

  Jacob’s Ladder. 2020. 10’x6″

“The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary picture is repeated without end. It is the highest emblem in the cipher of the world.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson, From his essay “Circles”

Thursday Thoughts: White and Red

“Red is the most joyful and dreadful thing in the physical universe; it is the fiercest note, it is the highest light, it is the place where the walls of this world of ours wear thinnest and something beyond burns through. White is not a mere absence of color; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black. God paints in many colors; but He never paints so…

The function of artists (according to William V. Dunning)

“Artists have traditionally examined the relationship between reality, illusion, and how the mind experiences these phenomena–the influence of human visual perception. In tune with recent philosophers, recent artists have focused on how language, or a mind that is constructed to invent and understand the world through language, influences our perception of reality.” From Advice to Young Artists…

Thursday Thoughts: A possible definition of creativity

The official definition of creativity (according to the New Oxford American Dictionary) is: the use of the imagination or original ideas, especially in the production of an artistic work. I would like to suggest an alternative definition. Creativity is the structuring of the chaos and brokenness of our world into some kind of order. Within that definition everyone from air traffic controllers and…

Jerry Saltz’s abandoned illuminations for “The Divine Comedy”

The following is a combination of quotes from the critic Jerry Saltz’s article “My Life as a Failed Artist.” “Before I became a critic, I was an artist, and for about ten years, beginning in the early 1970s, I feverishly devoted myself to a single, gigantic project: illustrating the entirety of Dante’s Divine Comedy — starting with Inferno. “These are the gates of hell. The famous inscription…

Painting on the back of the mylar Untitled, acrylic and ink on mylar The back and front of an element that will be cut out and included on the 4’x2′ cathedral painting I’m working on.

Thursday Thoughts: How a painting works

Proteus, Cy Twombly, 1984 The following is paraphrased from Roland Barthes’ The Wisdom of Art. Whenever we look at a painting the question is, “what is happening here?” The picture is a kind of theater, the curtain parts, we watch, we wait, we receive, we understand, and when the scene is over and the picture gone, we remember. In a painting there occurs a fact, an accident, an outcome, a…

Thursday Thoughts: Art as Alchemy

I was looking through Cirlot’s Dictionary of Symbols and found this description of Alchemy: Alchemy is a symbolic technique which seeks to materialize spiritual truths. It is a poetic, religious, and scientific endeavor. The goal is to experience material phenomena as symbols which point to a complete theory of the universe and the destiny of the soul (the secret of discovering gold would be a…

WIP, Pen, ink, and Acrylic on Mylar WIP, Pen, ink, and Acrylic on Mylar Mixing on glass over a sheet of white paper is the easiest to quickly clean I’ve discovered I like applying paint by dabbing masked-off areas with a sponge. This creates a flat, slightly textured area of color with no brushstrokes. Once the paint dries I will flip the frosted mylar over and you will be able to see the color…