Jon Groom: Below the light

After his exhibition at the Katolische Akademie in Bayern, the Welsh artist Jon Groom will be giving his third one-man show at Lorenzelli Arte starting Thursday, February 9 at 6:30 p.m. Thirty five acrylic and pigment canvas paintings will be exhibited, all created between 2003 and 2005, part of the series The Seasons. These are part of a group of works the artist painted observing the colours of the landscape around Mariakirten, where he lives. In his introductory remarks for the catalogue, Jon Groom himself tells us how this experience was so important for him, essential in fact, both in the beginning and in the development of his work. He tells us of the deep emotions he had while observing the landscape: “During my walks I always study colour. I make a comparison between the green of the leaves on a tree and the colour of the sky, and then I try to define the colour of the fields. The paintings of the series The Seasons are about all the colours I see – colours that are the language of the soul. Colours talk directly to the soul, and we feel them. I am not a landscape painter: the colours we see reflect the colours inside us”. Guido Schlimbach suggests that Groom's painting could present poetic affinities with the works of the Mexican architect Luis Barragán: the artist had seen some of his buildings in the late nineties, and had stated that Barragán “humanized geometry”. In fact Groom's painting is a painting that has an empathetic dialogue with architecture, with the space around it, with the conception of the inside and outside of pictorial space, almost “expanding” beyond the wall and entering into a dialogue with the surrounding elements. In this regard Jon Groom observes: “Some have said that my paintings are windows. In a way this is true. I focus on the idea of a window, not on a window that looks out towards the world, but on the one that lets us look inside of ourselves to find the reality of what we are”.