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NOTHING & EVERYTHING is an exhibition at PS Mirabel of paintings by artist Jason Thompson winner of the PS Mirabel 2017 open exhibition.

19 May - 23 June 2018

Open every Saturday 11am to 5 pm

Artists Statement

I make paintings with no pre-arranged plan or design. I usually use found wood and I make use of accidents, improvisation, automatism and repetition.
I begin to paint marks,with as little intention or ideas as I can, in response to the shape and qualities of the found wood I am painting on. Then I paint copies, echoes or variations of those marks. Then more marks, and more copies and eventually a structure emerges and forms out of itself through a kind of self-replicating feedback loop. Everything is built up very slowly in many simple layers.
Sometimes, because there is no plan, the painting comes to a dead end. When this happens I cut the wood into pieces and rearrange them in new ways and the painting will carry on. Often the image wants to extend beyond the edges of the wood so I attach more wood to accommodate this new growth.
Almost always the image grows into an asymmetrical symmetry that resembles the bodies of living creatures, the structure of plants and the patterns of people's faces.
I like to imagine the process of making the paintings is a kind of echo of the process of evolution, and like evolution there is no ultimate goal and no “purpose” beyond the business of creating something and of being alive in the world.
I cannot say that the paintings have any “subject”, the work is about nothing and everything else all at once.
I hope that maybe what I make is a continuation of that which made me.

Jason Thompson 2018