John Wesa - Serigraphy
Arcata Artisan since 2010
Art is the communal fire we stand around. Different communities have a variety of fires. Some give warmth and light when we find darkness in our soul, some don’t. Jesus said “ If the eye is dark, how great is the darkness?”
I have an aversion to art for art’s sake. Art should be interpretive. Sure art can comment on itself, but far better if it helps us understand our fellow human beings and the creation around us.
In the realm of artistic influences there have been many fascinating things. I’m completely fascinated by petroglyphs. Their intention is so living yet eternal. Egyptian art is similar, frozen like a cast shadow from another dimension of time. And, of course I love Edward Hopper; who allows us to float through his paintings as ghosts. Of late I have realized what a great influence the prints of Hokusai had on me when I was younger. I’ve always been more impressed by his form and composition than any European Artist.
So now (in the near distance) when I’m printing a long run and I see the ink furling off the squeegee I’m transported to another time and place. I could be driving a tractor watching the disks cutting and folding the earth over. I could be running up the Carquinez Strait in a small boat, against the tide, in the dark with only the stars glittering off the wake and the lights on shore to guide me. After all, I was run over by a boat when I was a child. Fascinated be the bow wake I was reaching over and trailing my finger in it. What could have been a Darwin Award, simply became a Mashugana experience.
So if there is anything I’m trying to do now it’s stay on a course of discovery in my medium of screen printing.
