Jonathan Beer

Background

About Jonathan Beer

As a first generation American, my interest in cultural expression stems from feeling between histories: my actual American upbringing contrasts the connection I feel towards my Romanian and Italian heritage. Between those histories lie questions surrounding identity and belonging. My works seek to expand identity encapsulated inside the places and objects that captivate me: historical imagery from Europe, contemporary commercial design, photography of America, and my experiences of contemporary life. My works employ landscape imagery, architecture, and design languages to reflect that search in an attempt to understand my place among those histories. My paintings are simultaneously visionary pictures and also displays of my mind. The canvas acts as a surface for interaction, an external screen that solidifies the intermingling of time and place that happens constantly inside the brain. Whether a remembered landscape, or a painted tableau my images always face inward, a window that interrupts the current reality and points towards the mind. I am also the Director of the Blind Artists Society, as well as a Supporting Artist in the Society. Specialties: Painting, Criticism, Curating, Design