Jonathan Franklin ART

                          Revealing and Concealing

  

   As a child living in Asia, I was immersed in a world of vivid colors, patterns, sounds and textures. But in that world I was a foreigner, an outsider and I struggled between being, on one hand, accepted, and on the other, feeling alienated from the culture around me.  Exploring these rough edges that have to do with identity and belonging---of making  disparate pieces fit together---have been a consistent presence in my work. 

   When I make art I often fracture images into  numerous parts and when I reassemble them, the resulting discord is similar to that which occurs in Cubism, where one can observe a subject simultaneously from multiple points of view. 

   I am constantly struggling to make the rough edges, that occur when I cut pieces apart to fit together.  As in Cubism, this exercise can be visually unsettling and dissonant. But it also can reveal the unexpected.  This element of surprise, of revealing the sense of visual harmony, is the journey I continue to pursue.   

    I work intuitively in a nonlinear fashion, constantly reviewing, reassessing,  and revising my work over time.  It can take days, weeks, months, years, and some cases, even decades of trial and error to finish and because of this, the finished product, what one sees on the surface, may bare little or no resemblance to how it began.