Jeremy Schilling - November 2023
On display are excerpts from several bodies of work which Jeremy has been exploring over the past several years. Below you will find some thoughts on each as well as a little about him:
In Jeremy’s ongoing series, “The Overview Effect,” his artwork focuses on astronauts and space, specifically exploring the concept of the space suit and how it acts as a shield between a person and their environment. Using oil paint, watercolors, and mixed media, these images are emotionally charged examining homesickness, the acceptance of change, and the loneliness of exploration.
The presented mounted charcoal and graphite work is a selection from over 2,000 drawings, paintings, and mixed media pieces created since the middle of 2020. The main body of this collection is not about refinement but rather the physicality of the charcoal and or graphite medium, specifically highlighting the reactionary decision making in response to a live models pose. Each drawing is a five minute conversation, a question (the models pose) and the response (artist use of composition and marks). Working from life is a unique experience, as the act of observation is a fleeting one. There is only time to capture and record the most important elements and because of this, a drawing can become a journal of decisions of deemed importance. There is an honesty that emerges from these decisions.
Conversely, the figurative works in oil and mixed media focus on creating a visual narrative through the selection of a single word, attempting to represent that word with the application, texture, and color of the paint. The resulting pieces create an effect of the embodiment of the internal thoughts of the figures being portrayed bridging the internal world with the physical world of the figure. Works of facial features attempt to explore the senses and our navigation of the world.
Jeremy’s work has been on display at Gold Gallery in Boston’s SoWa District, The Wickford Arts Association Gallery, Mystic Arts Center Gallery, The Wickford and Scituate Art Festivals, and the RISD Craft Exhibition. He has had solo exhibitions at Counter Weight Brewing Company in Hamden CT in 2018, Perkatory Coffee Roasters in Middletown CT in 2019, AS220’s Main Project Space in Providence RI in 2019, and annually at the Pawtucket Art Collaborative since 2020.
In July 2019 his work was part of a month-long display at the Waterfire Arts Center in conjunction with Luke Jerram’s “Museum of the Moon” and John Sabraw’s “The Milky Way.” The exhibit was in celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the Apollo Moon landing and was in partnership with Brown University and the NASA RI Space Consortium.
Jeremy grew up in Connecticut where he was trained as a landscape painter before attending the Rhode Island School of Design, where he studied Illustration.
