J Myszka Lewis

Lives and works in Madison, WI, USA

Artist statement

I work across print media, painting, and video, using pattern and repetition to collapse and complicate conventional understandings of time. Drawing from 17th-century Dutch still lifes—paintings that famously assemble a variety of carefully cultivated plants and blooms from different seasons into impossible arrangements—I am interested in how these images construct a heightened, almost fantastical vision of nature. Beneath their beauty, however, lie subtle signs of decay: wilting petals, insects feeding on leaves, and fruit on the verge of rot. These details suggest that all things are fleeting, and that instability or turmoil may exist beneath an immaculate surface. In my work, I exaggerate and remix these elements to an obsessive degree. Petals droop into cascades of duplicated blooms; a bumblebee loops endlessly between repeating lilies; green grapes blur and transfigure into moss. These vibrating gardens—spaces that can only exist within the psyche—disrupt and distort temporal continuity, as linear understandings of time give way to more cyclical and recursive structures. As I cultivate a sense of wildness within these landscapes, I find myself consumed by them in return. My studio practice has become a way for me to process lived experiences of anxiety and depression. Through obsessive detail, saturated color, and relentless repetition, the work reflects cycles of rumination and mental paralysis. In this way, the work positions temporality as contingent and...

Artwork