Studio Visit: Artist Jon Barwick
The NYC-based artist creates rich, layered work inspired by architecture and rooted in visionary techniques
Instantly striking and undoubtedly worthy of a closer look, Jon Barwick‘s painted works boast immense depth—the kind that calls to mind dense city spaces. Offering one scene upon first glance and hundreds more when you’re mere inches away, the paintings are smattered with motifs and objects that jut out toward the viewer and back into a seemingly distant abyss. All of this happens courtesy of acrylic on canvas—oftentimes large-scale.
The University of Georgia-trained artist refers to the genre of his work as “visionary.” He’s concentrated on this specific style now for 15 years. For viewers, it lies somewhere between a fish-eyed portrayal of a future-forward city and imagery from a space-based art film. “My imagination is my main resource,” he says. “I like to be able to invent stuff. Not that everything I’m inventing—if I need a dodecahedron rendered perfectly, I have to go to the internet. But for my resources I always go back to my imagination and drawing and doodles. It helps with originality. If your resource is inside it’s harder for people to copy.”
Barwick’s process is rooted in session painting. He’ll find himself in front of the canvas until he’s happy with what’s there. Sometimes pieces take four to five weeks—though he cannot pinpoint exactly how many hours he’s allocated to each piece. Other works, like a few smaller canvases he’s shipping off to a show in Scotland, inherently move more quickly. His paper works require similar shifts; he’ll pull from his lexicon of imagery and rapidly apply them as he sees fit.
“People will see a picture on Instagram and they’re like, ‘Is this digital?’ or ‘What program did you use?'” he says. “I get a kick out of it. If people think a computer made this work, I’m like, ‘Sure, I’m fine with that.’ But obviously if you see it in person you’ll see and feel that the layers are physical.”
Hero image: “Eyes in the Sky” (2016) courtesy of Jon Barwick
COOL HUNTING always gets permission to use the images we publish; however, as an independent publication, we cannot afford to continue fighting unfair claims of copyright infringement, so the images have been removed from this post.
