left: Grandmother and Son, 2006, oil on canvas,
36x48"
center: Falling Man; Suit, 2007, oil on canvas, 60x60"
right: Cloud Series #3, 2007, oil on canvas, 20x20"
Robert Jessup's newest works hone the unique fictional
realism that has marked his practice since he returned to figurative painting
after painting abstractly during the later half of the 1990's.
What sets this newest work apart even from paintings completed as recently
as 2003 is the means by which his paint application has determined the
telling of a different kind of narrative; one focused on individual communication,
non-linear storytelling and the psychologically based drama of appearance.
A thinner application of paint has allowed Jessup to convey a more detailed
and anatomically exact figure thus fine-tuning his ability to describe.
The subjects of Jessup's paintings are now, as then, fictional, which
inherently lends an air of strangeness and surrealness to each of the
characters.
Their stories, in the past told by the situational environment in which
the characters resided is told in the new work by the characterization
of the face; a side glance look, the arch of a brow and the gesture of
the body.
Selected Exhibitions:
Joseph Rickards Gallery, New York, NY
Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi, TX
Schomburg Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
Galveston Art Center, Galveston, TX
Fay Gold Gallery, Atlanta, GA
Littlejohn Sternau Gallery, New York, NY
Ruth Siegel Gallery, New York, NY
Zolla Lieberman Gallery, Chicago, IL
Nicola Jacobs Gallery, London
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA
Roswell Museum and Art Center, Roswell, NM
Jan Turner Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
The Amarillo Museum of Art, Amarillo, TX