Maryland-based artist Wayson R. Jones is a painter, spoken-word artist, and musician. His life has been filled with art since grade school, including music, improvisational dance, performance, poetry, film, and all forms of visual art. As a self-taught painter, Wayson’s work is grounded in an interest in material and the performative aspects of his previous art experiences.  

Jones’ paintings are rich with color and highly dimensional. His rich and dense surfaces are created by layers of graphite or pumice gel mixed with pigment to build paintings that break the traditional frame and pour into space. His use of the horizontal line, however, helps build structure and serves as a ground for his use of texture and vibrant color.

Despite the implied horizon lines in these works, no landscapes are depicted; yet landscape is fundamental to Jones’s practice. His thick, dense surfaces, nearly all-over compositions, and vibrating color pairings combine to produce an optical effect suggestive of an all-consuming encounter with natural phenomenon, such as the expansive horizon line at sea.

This series of new paintings asks viewers to lean into that sense of being located in physical space. Yet, the artist denies us the gratification of a narrative or a represented place. Because it is not about the specific place, but the experience of being in it. Each of these paintings contains an invitation to let the artwork activate your full physicality, to feel the piece in your body beyond the act of seeing.