- November 14, 2024
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To raise money for improvements to the second floor of his art gallery, J.J. Graham is on track to complete what he calls a “creative marathon”: He’s finishing 50+ paintings in just a couple of months for an art show, “The Builder Paintings,” to be hosted Saturday, June 18, at Salvo Art.
Compared with the thousands of dollars he usually gets for his commissions and other paintings, Graham said he’s planning to keep the prices of these 50 pieces affordable — in the $500 range, depending on the size — to reach his goal of $25,000 for the gallery.
Salvo Art has been in existence for more than two years now at the current location, on the grounds of Nature Scapes, at 313 Old Brick Road, Bunnell. Slowly, Graham and co-owner Petra Iston have made improvements at the gallery, first subdividing the space for individual studios, then buying an air-conditioning system. Next, Graham wants to subdivide the second floor for more studios, which would help reinforce the gallery’s finances.
To reach his goal, Graham is doing what he does best, and that’s paint, often late into the night.
“I'm painting very fast, but I'm using 18-19 years of experimenting,” he said.
Graham describes his style as “Post apocalyptic Southern gothic graffiti.” He a student of art history, but he is also a great experimenter, often coming up with unusual textures mixed into his paints.
The most recent formal experiment involves drawing with acrylic paint squeezed out of a spout on a bottle that is normally used for hair products. He calls it his “acrylic pen” and uses it to create lines and human forms on wax paper or velum; then he presses the paper onto a painting.
Graham is also using aluminum foil in his paintings, giving some portions a luminous quality.
“It gets you into a lucid state,” he said of the foil. “You see all kinds of things in there. Your mind becomes a projector. Then, after an hour of doing that, you don't need the foil anymore.”
He compares the sensation to something songwriter Tom Waits said in an interview: that the best songs are those that come to you “like dreams taken through a straw.”
Graham’s 50 pieces are diverse in subject matter and style: He has a painting of a cowboy inspired by Louis L’Amour novels; he has abstract portraits; he has a farmer plowing a field with a red cartoon heart.
“It’s more intuitive that conception,” Graham said of what will be his fourth solo show at his galleries in the past several years. And as with his other shows, Graham’s “intuition” on canvas is something worth experiencing.
