Figure Study 11

Jonathon Nix believes that visual art must speak for itself, but there are two quotations that help him to express what it is he strives for in his work:

“I want to see with my whole being. Williams Blake called it seeing through the eye rather than with the eye: instead of superimposing my own expectations on a subject, I seek what the form will reveal of essence, what the visible will tell me of the invisible. It is an effort that requires intense, prayerful attention, but if the seeing is honest and the hand is well trained, a revelation will emerge. The reward is bliss.”
-Polly Thayer, Boston artist

“The art of the past tried to give us something like … a look into the depths of the human other. Videos of passersby aren’t the same. Nor are obscene urns or dead sharks or anything, really, that’s wry or detached or ironic, that’s meant to shock or provoke.”
-Michael Cunnihgham, “By Nightfall”