John Singletary

Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY

Artist statement

My work is involved with the invisible – my fears, and my subconscious. I study biblical stories, folk tales, and construct my paintings with freedom and openness. My paintings are projections of my own subconscious - my own longing, dreams, moments in love or pain. The symbols in my work are signposts. Symbols into which I have projected, and therefore charged symbols. I am searching for a sort of presence in my work – this could be described as my primary objective. Though I make work from lived experience, I situate my work within broader traditions, a tradition of scraping images into being, the tradition of projecting from deep cavities in the subconscious. From Lightnin’ Hopkins to DJ Screw and Omar S, from Tarkovsky to Kermit Oliver and Gauguin. Every piece of mine is about longing, they are about time, about my family, mysticism, memories that have stuck to me – about this inner world. And while I enter my work with intentions, and handfuls of stories, images, and ideas that allow me to process these things, ultimately this work is not successful until it becomes something foreign to me completely.

Artwork