A Statement for the Retrospective

A display of paintings by Jack Stone, done since about late 1980's

This current grouping, “Partial Truths and Outright Fabrications”, taps into roughly four decades of painting. Some of it has been on a wall before, much of it never. As a “retrospective”, it is heavy on more recent work. The title reflects the temper of the times, the internal and external vagaries of human self-presentation and interaction.

Making art was my “grounding” activity since childhood. Out of a wide circle of interests and involvements, drawing and painting always felt like a center point, an origin and a home. It was reflexive and self-renewing – I sometimes cared much about others' opinion, but mainly I was invigorated by socially connecting through a common experience of creativity. In recent years, I have been hunting in my own imagination.

What was once more or less generally assumed true is now held in doubt. Every day we confront more sudden challenges to consensus. Disruption disrupts itself before it sits down. The floor of reality is shifting in all dimensions. This process is necessary, inevitable, and just beginning. A new human is slowly being born. And it's messy, and it's inexorable.

The term “painting”, in a cultural sense, is gorged with meanings. To many who read this, and myself, it seems that this medium is fading under the tide of new technologies and the carnivorous vacuum of “big A.I” . Painting may be a stubborn hold-out. If so, I'll paint on my dying day, with the computer in the freezer and every felt or visible life-form leaping into new vitality. The dance goes on, and we're all participating. All impostors will be revealed, their substance devoured. We want the truth, about everything.

Art is a lens into truth. The challenge now is how to turn it to the perfect focus. And in the process, we initiate and confront misrepresentations. Pretense, fraud, mind-games, manipulation... so many ways of skirting, forestalling, masquerading the truth. I'm as guilty of this as anyone, and I don't like that. I don't have time for that. Time is getting short.

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For the opportunity to display a sampling of my work done over the last 4 decades, I thank the founders and owners of the Continental Club, Eric and Adrienne Robert. Their hospitable establishment has become Greensboro's premier live talent venue, extending now into the rich regional output of visual arts.

I am also grateful to the in-house visual art impresario, Preston Wiles, a professional photographer with a keen eye and heart for the infinite range of expression through 2D and 3D art forms.

With the aid of my wonderful friend and graphic artist, Ashley Virginia - whose own music career is slicing like a saber through the haze of malaise - we put up a website with many of paintings I've put aside over the years: www.jackstoneamericanartist.com