Jack Reilly
Jack Reilly is a contemporary American artist known as a pioneer of shaped canvas painting and an original member of the Abstract Illusionism movement of the late 1970s.
Statement: "Circles of Time and Space"
The circle holds strong significance as a fundamental geometric shape and has played a crucial role in astronomy, mathematics, and physics. It has been known since before recorded history. Circles are common throughout the cosmos and within our natural world. It is the basis for the wheel and numerous other scientific devices used in modern inventions and machinery. As a simple object, it symbolizes the concept of cosmic unity and the cyclical nature of existence. In religious traditions it signifies many sacred and spiritual concepts, including unity, infinity, wholeness, the universe, divinity, balance, stability and perfection, among numerous other ideas.
We generally tend to perceive the passage of time in a linear manner although many common devices used to measure time are formatted in circular configurations. These range from ancient sun dials to analog clocks and modern timepieces. In what we perceive as our physical universe, spherical planets rotate in circular orbits around massive stars as everything hurls through the infinity of space. From Stonehenge to medieval calendars to analog wristwatches, the preoccupation with the circle as a representation of time and mysteries of the universe has puzzled humans, from primitive stargazers to the most educated of scientists of our time.
My interest lies in the investigation, expressed through abstract painting, of elements regarding the circle and its connection to concepts of time and space, both tangible and intangible. I choose to begin on a circular-shaped structure as a formal device, which creates a visual container that refers to the nature of the circle as a metaphor of the elements it represents. My physical methods employed to the series of concentric circles that surround the outlying areas of the circle consist of hundreds, if not thousands of rapidly applied, highly chromatic brushstrokes, which are tightly compressed within multiple hard-edge boundaries. I refer to these as orbits. The visual effect of my punctuated brushwork has often been compared to Gothic stained glass and Byzantine mosaics. Within the center of these circular objects lie wide-open spaces, alluring portals consisting of soft fields of color (that appear to be) floating somewhere behind the polychromed rings of the canvas perimeters. Within these color fields, one can get lost in ambient sensations and visual ambiguity of light, color, and space.
Contemplating symbolic and formal references of these circular paintings, or simply meditating upon the object itself, and its intrinsic beauty, is of course the prerogative of the viewer. One can approach them simply as colors and textures on a circular object, or metaphors of the physical and metaphysical state in which we exist.
