In his newest series, Steady with the Holy Ghost, Jonathan creates images where the mythical, presence, mundane, and searching are vital elements on his journey of surrender. Conservative states and religions may hide and/or exclude the queer experience. Jonathan responds by making art that longs for other possibilities.
Moving between drawing and painting, Jonathan explores the act of reaching God through different mediums. Painting and drawing.
Blue. Catholicism reserves the use of blue for celebrations of the Virgin Mary: transcendence, myth, mother of the peacemaker, bearing the unknown, and peace.
Graphite/Charcoal. Historically, a process of forming preliminary ideas. Beginning. Surrender. Humility. Prayer.
Blue. All Down Darkness Wide by Seán Hewitt. “Out here in June, we had been cutting back the lupins and they seemed miraculous to me, so profuse and wild — their upright electric-blue spears — as if the flowers held all the energy of the sky and the dimming night. Later in the summer, Elias had given me some seeds to take home to my mother. And here I was, standing by them, in an entirely different world. I listened to the tide and felt myself swaying, as if the waters in my ear were being lifted. When I opened my eyes I could almost picture the ghosts of those lupins gathered around me…”
In January I decided to take a break from social media. I was reading a book a week, which was unusual for me. The books: On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong, The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin, The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, and A Season in Hell by Arthur Rimbaud. I felt connected and in lockstep with everything around me, but I also felt a longing to be seen and heard. People often turn to myths and spiritual paths to fill the voids we cannot shake from within. Each piece is a fragmented reflection of that journey for me. The series is a rejection of a linear narrative and invitation to surrender to the present. While reading A Season in Hell by Arthur Rimbaud, I found myself rolling my eyes at how dramatic he was. Blake interrupted to ask what animal I wanted to be. I said, “a flying turtle.” Humans and turtles cannot fly, but sometimes in my mind - I am as dramatic as Rimbaud, a Sally Mann landscape, or a pope filtered through Bacon’s brushes. Then- I awake, fall, and realize you are…
here with me.
Smoke: letting go, incense, offering
Chairs: loneliness, invitation, awe, presence, think, surrender
Charcoal: drama, dream, myth
Painting: versions of reality
Wheat: love, resurrection, fluidity, change
“These people are blemishes at your love feasts,
eating with you without the slightest qualm—
shepherds who feed only themselves.
They are clouds without rain, blown along by the wind;
autumn trees, without fruit and uprooted— twice dead.”
-The Book of Jude, verse 12
“Yet with his hands Love wipes my weeping eyes,
Saying, this toil will end in happy cheer;
What costs the heart so much, must needs be dear!”
-Michelangelo to Tommaso de’ Cavalieri
Flesh/Spirit is a response to the passages above. Jonathan uses his kitchen table, the figure, heart, found photos, and nature as tools to help communicate a fear and acceptance of death. What will be left in the end? Why do people and the government ignore the deaths of minorities? Are we the blemishes? Jonathan used these questions to create realities in his work. “I hope this series reveals how we create our own worldview to deal with fear. For me, I make the fear beautiful. Some will call it naive. I call it hope.” This is Adams’ fourth series dealing with what it means to be an LGBTQ person in the southern United States.
This body of work is on display at The Living Room Gallery in Water Valley, Mississippi. The gallery is owned and curated by Amelia presents.
Coming out felt like joining the circus. People wanted to see and hear about the spectacle. A gay boy who loved God in Mississippi. The Myth of the Beast is my way of confronting insecurities and moving into love. The act of painting and imagery used allow an escape from judgment and transition to love.
In this series, most of the paintings are at night. I want the viewer to feel like they are walking in the dark. The circus elements represent religion and judgment. I paint myself in uncomfortable circumstances and show the viewer that one can still be content. The figures are all self-portraits planted within the landscape with the exception of my love. Finally, the anatomical heart symbolizes that what is within us can unite and set us free.
Most of my life, I believed I was a beast. Many LGBTQ+ people feel this way in places that demonize their existence. I grow in confidence by freeing myself from the power of people’s judgement. If I survive the dark nights, I always have hope. My new work challenges the myth in my mind, ignites constructions into flames, and offers a window to where I go to find freedom.
Inspired by my drives through the Mississippi landscape and Catholic iconography, these self portraits explore meditations on space and belonging.
Over the years I have ingested text and social norms preached to me by churches, media, teachers, and peers. The body of work you see before you is a response to my process of accepting, rejecting, and redefining those words and norms to create an identity.
The process of painting is similar to the way an identity is formed. We shape ourselves by layering information received or dismissed. The figure is central to communication, because any text ever recorded or spoken has a face and voice delivering the message. I used paint, anatomy, and text to create these particular figures. By allowing the viewer to see these layers, it is my purpose that the viewer understands that one cannot simply walk away from the messages one hears unaltered. Through the application of paint certain areas of the figure are rendered and other parts left undone or exaggerated. This allows the viewer to travel through my painting process as well as take a visual journey through how I formed my identity as a gay person.
Many LGBTQ people grow up without a structural space that supports their existence. Most of the time institutions and social norms leave us on the outskirts. I used symbols that represent perfection in order to challenge the viewer to contemplate the LGBTQ community in a new way. I also used objects that became sacred to me when I felt nothing physical could support me. I am interested in challenging the viewer to explore the way these figures and objects exist in a space that is not determined by the traditional canvas. The ambiguous space represented is the place where I have sought out God, where I have tried to work through the fact that my physical experience in life is in stark contrast to what is so often preached to me.
Throughout history, art often reflects the culture and beliefs of the time. We live in a time where cultural and religious views towards the LGBTQ community are shifting. In this space the viewer is challenged to understand my own response of navigating through the changing texts and conversations and determine their own response to the shifting norms. This is my humble attempt to insert my own representation of the LGBTQ community into art history. We are a people that not only experience the sacred but delight in it, we are a people with a unique identity, with many layers, some formed by ingesting those texts and social norms, and some formed by challenging those same institutions and offering a new and beautiful perspective.
The idea for "Splinter" arose from these characteristics. Like the fragments and pieces of the structure, the artists in this exhibition represent a part of a whole. They are splinters of groups who suffer beneath the weight of oppression. Whether it is race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or socio-economic status, these groups are broken from a history of discrimination. But like splinters, they are sharp and alert us to our carelessness. They force themselves into our lives and command our attention, bringing light to the way minorities are treated in the South.
"Splinter" also represents hope. This exhibition is but a fragment of what is possible in a community when we address these issues. By bringing together diverse groups and ideas, we can challenge oppressive power structures and break apart negative stereotypes. And through our collaboration, we can revitalize neighborhoods and communities, all while retaining their unique history and character.
Something about cutting the old away and adding the new allows me the ability to curate the history of images. I manipulate images in a way that communicates the narrative I want to see and believe.
