"I began my life beside the New England docks, moved to the woodlands of Western Pennsylvania and have toiled in the heart of restless urban centers. Now, I have come to the desert after discovering new laws of aesthetics afresh in Japan. I am both excited and daunted by the gauntlet set before me – that being to continually re-assess, re-address and honor the creative muse that guides me.

 

With 25 years’ experience behind me, I believe that I possess the fluency and vision to revitalize the medium of low relief with fresh vigor. Rather than the static documentation of objects that relief is often relegated to, I seek to infuse my work with the visually kinetic energy of living things. Each piece that I undertake stands as an invitation into nature's wonderment and the offering of a second chance to embrace that which otherwise may have been overlooked.

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Now through the voice of Modernism, I am also endeavoring to re-evaluate the knowledge that I have garnered during my years as a Realist sculptor and to express my subjects through an energetic clarification and distillation of shape and form - thereby exploring symbols, archetypes and the beauty of elemental geometry resident in nature. The works that have emerged are dynamic windows into and direct expressions of the underlying fractured and synchronous structural elements that are intrinsic to relief sculptures' intricate layering process.

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To be an artist, is to me, to live within the world as an active and humble learner - always fascinated, ever striving, often failing and dynamically compelled - seeking to see into the unique "thingness" of each of my subjects - and further, attempting to find a way to value and make manifest the thrumming gossamer causal threads that join us all together as a living world.

Tending towards the elemental and organic, my work often centers upon confrontation, struggle and passage. Whether this is direct or suggestive, polarized images and ideas provoke and inspire me. In search of such, I find that I am most often drawn to the natural world & more specifically, environments that dynamically manifest the rigors of existence and the passage of time. The beauty and complexity of nature amidst its transitions and the seldom-chanced honor of bearing some witness to them, reminds me to lace up my boots and wander - when I am able, so long as I am able.

... And so to it, the road ahead awaits ... "

J.D. Welsh - 2019