“These works are broken windows begging to be climbed through. Inside there is something of the unconscious or ghosts. Whatever is there, it only wants to be seen. It is impossible to ignore. It screams to a world through a microphone in the corner of a burned out church. It reveals itself as cave paintings meticulously marking times and places on the stone walls of the mind. Here there are maps through neglected forests and calendars of holy days. There are visions of rusted tracks and crumbled homes. There are skies that no one remembers and heartbeats that no one has heard. There are the folded faces of old men trying to speak. And if you listen, you will hear that these are not only paintings but histories and songs.”
~ Yuli Bonner
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"Jesse Gray's work bespeaks a solemnity in awareness that may be overlooked by the unobservant. What is first seen as a sprawling, unchained aesthetic is belied by a delicate and thoughtful attention to detail. Indeed, the whole spectrum of human emotion is present in these unassuming creations of paper and pigment."
~ Josh Beck |