Grant Wahlquist Gallery is proud to announce Jay Stern’s first solo exhibition in Maine, “Awning.” The exhibition runs from June 22 – August 17, 2024. 

Since his arrival in Maine in 2021 Jay Stern has rapidly become known for jewel-toned paintings of interior scenes and still lifes. Stern begins his paintings with a thin, loose ground over which increasingly active, quick brushstrokes proliferate, alternately calling attention to the underlying ground or tucking it away such that each work manifests its own construction in an almost archeological fashion. Stern’s obsession with the mechanics of appearances, the imbrication of abstraction and representation, and painterly surfaces places his practice squarely within a Modernist project that has obvious forbears in the region, especially John Marin and Milton Avery. Yet as “Awning” makes clear, perhaps no artist has had as seismic an effect on Stern’s work as Paul Cézanne, whose own investigation of the landscape was greatly influenced by his friendship with geologist Antoine-Fortuné Marion. As Cézanne wrote to painter Joachim Gasquet, “In order to paint a landscape well, I first need to discover its geological foundations.”

Though “Awning” does contain interior scenes, here Stern presents, for the first time, predominantly images of the Maine landscape—his own acts of geological excavation. While perhaps no subject has been explored so exhaustively in Maine art, Stern’s combination of a newcomer’s eyes and an explicitly queer perspective enables a fresh contribution to this storied tradition. The exhibition’s title clearly nodding to structures that cover liminal or exposed spaces such as windows and doorframes, these paintings evince psychic states that are themselves liminal and exist on the cusp of a wide variety of transitions. By tracking the landscape through New England’s seasons and careful composition and framing, Stern summons our attention to complicated feelings about coverage and exposure, constraint and freedom, shelter and wilderness, chaos and control.

Taken as a whole, “Awning” reveals the analogical nature of Stern’s artistic project. For example, the structures depicted in Exposed Fall House and House on Mechanic St. sit behind trees denuded of foliage and function as metaphors for (bodily) exposure, of intruding and perhaps also being observed. Taking this implicit sense of voyeurism further, Hope Park and Birch Point Signs both call attention to the often arbitrary ways in which land is broken into discrete or manageable units; through subtle invocation of the practice of cruising, they also seem to suggest the ways in which queer and other marginalized people have found ways to put the landscape to alternative use. Even in the interior scenes that remain—including the largest single painting in “Awning,” Forever Suspended in a Doorway (Self Portrait)—the outdoors seems to emotionally predominate, to seep, intrude, or erupt into domestic space via moments of pictorial distortion.

Each of the paintings in “Awning” depicts a moment of fracture, cleavage, or becoming. Sometimes this depiction is literal, as in Early Summer, with its evocation of a table where a loved one has perhaps just departed; sometimes it is formal, as in the bifurcated scheme of Drift Inn Beach; sometimes it is perceptual, in which the near abstraction of White Pine Walk nonetheless becomes legible as a landscape. Yet in all cases these paintings are quietly powerful expressions of the potency of nature and everyday experience, of how—seemingly out of nowhere—a walk through the woods can lead to a revelation. In short, each painting is a manifestation of surprise.

Jay Stern received a BFA in painting from the University of Cincinnati and an MFA in arts leadership from Seattle University. Stern’s work has been presented in exhibitions at: NOON Projects, Los Angeles (solo); Turley Gallery, Hudson, New York (two-person exhibition with Jean Blackburn); UTA Artist Space, Atlanta (forthcoming); the Portland Museum of Art, Maine (forthcoming); the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockland; the Caldbeck Gallery, Rockland; studio e Gallery, Seattle; and Koplin Del Rio, Seattle, amongst others. His work has been written about in numerous publications including Art New England, Décor Maine, the Portland Press Herald, and The Stranger. In 2024, Stern received an Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation grant and was an artist in residence at the James Castle House in Boise, Idaho. He lives and works in mid-coast Maine.

Can you tell us about the process of making your work?

My work typically starts with a place or moment in time that stops me from moving forward, a pause that sticks with me. From my own memory I decide why that moment or place feels interesting or significant. Through layering and composing images on the canvas, a structural world is built. With a loose washy base, I’m able to bring in subject matter that holds the composition together and tells a story. I tend to fluctuate between large shapes and breaking up what I’ve built. Then, approaching smaller details meticulously with care and a sense of intentional pace. The last step is assessing how much communication the painting is revealing and if it feels balanced to me. I also enjoy making sure there are several moments in the process where I’m just playing with paint… painting from a really pure place, abstracting what is already in the picture.

How would you define your work in a few words (ideally in 3 words)?

Prism, Active, Shifting.

How did you come up with the idea of ‘Forever Suspended in a Doorway (Self Portrait)’ (2024)? Is there any story behind this artwork?

After spending months focusing my time on landscape and exterior paintings, I felt it was time to build an interior space that spoke to some of the hardships faced by leaving home and touch on the push and pull of returning/departing. Often the queer experience straddles itself between two places: one where we are presenting with a reflection of the world and pressures we feel, or our truest form which is hopefully less influenced but felt honestly within. Although this being an interior painting, I wanted the two windows on each side to pull the landscape in but also feel portal-like. I also played with multiple foregrounds here with the stovetop being the first and the fruit bowl hovering into a more frontal perspective. I think the portrait acts as both a shield and a window out of the painting. The two actual figurative elements in the painting (hands and my face in the mirror) serve drastically different functions, the hands being highly rendered and frontal and the portrait being etched into the base paint with pencil.

You are currently presenting your new solo exhibition, “Awning”, at the Grant Wahlquist Gallery in Portland, Maine; What is your newest body of work about in this show?

The Maine landscape permeates and roots itself as the main character in this body of work. My effort was to document spaces that felt settled to me in my body as I spent time in them. I found myself “making sense” of these locations by constructing man-made objects throughout the scene in a collage-type manner which I think helped me understand different functions and simple visual complexities of nature’s humourous intensity. Maine painting is a big part of what fuels the spine of my inspirations and this show was my effort in making it my own, creating a new way of representing the landscape with a more investigative slow approach. The title Awning comes from a sculpture idea I had where I would install an awning inside of the gallery. The audience would then walk through the awning as they enter the space, an object that we most consider or identify when we exit a space. The duality here I think works and touches on the false security that nature sometimes provides, like an awning, still open to all the elements but offers some supplemental ease.

In the exhibitions press release, it is highlighted that ‘taking this implicit sense of voyeurism further, Hope Park and Birch Point Signs both call attention to the often arbitrary ways in which land is broken into discrete or manageable units; through subtle invocation of the practice of cruising, they also seem to suggest the ways in which queer and other marginalized people have found ways to put the landscape to alternative use’; Can you elaborate on this please?

A lot of this work is trying to make sense of the “foreverness” of nature and its ongoing vastness that feels chaotic and overwhelming sometimes. While looking at Milton Avery’s slow, soft, and quiet landscapes, I realized that the way he broke up the landscape was his way of making sense of it. I instilled the same ethos here but with the man-made, allowing these objects to break up the natural world and provide a sense of structure and order. As far as putting the landscape to “alternative use,” I’ve been considering how landscape is used both as a mechanism for healing but also as a tool for hiding. Both indications of some type of “seeking,” my hope is that the work also speaks to the opportunity we have as people to occupy spaces differently and create connections to nature that aren’t always formal or ordinary.

Daily interior spaces such as a cozy living room, a significant plantation depiction and other contemporary architrctural landascapes usually consist your body of work. What does really motivate you to get involved into this sort of representation of such ambiguous?

I’m curious about the moment just before “still life” is agitated, changed, or manipulated. This is life though, it never stops, things are always moving and morphing. I hope to represent the moment in a painting just before this might occur, where the presence of human life is noticeable, but the figure isn’t necessary. For the most part, the domestic space is my most consistent muse. It’s where I spend most of my time. I recently read a quote from Xavier Dolan, Canadian filmmaker and actor, “I wanted to get out of childhood as soon as possible and escape it, and now that I’m making movies, I’m chasing it.” This sentiment resonated with me as I’ve been trying to reach into my memory from childhood and think through themes of home and belonging, space and comfort, and how these might affect my excitement for the domestic experience.

Can you mention any artists you, lately or generally, take inspiration from?

I’ve been finding a lot of inspiration from the early works of Yvonne Jacquette and Janet Fish. Skyler Chen is making beautifully composed paintings that tell stories but are also really nicely put together… his surface and understanding of color is also so beautiful. Christopher Culver’s soft delicate but raw works on paper are a new favorite. Louis Fratino, Jordan Kasey, and Sedrick Chisom I look up to in regards to composition and cropping. Generally, some main inspirations are Richard Diebenkorn, Cezanne, Milton Avery, Howard Hodgkin and Betty Parsons.

What about the place where you work? What’s your studio space look like?

My studio is in a grange hall in a rural Maine town about 15 minutes from the coast. My drive to the studio from home is filled with sweeping views of cattle farms and small mountains that line the landscape, beautiful old trees, and winding roads. It’s a constant inspiration and really puts me in the mood to paint.

Which are your plans for the near future?

I just finished a bunch of new work for upcoming shows late Summer/early Fall and hope to keep the momentum and flow in the studio. I’m also looking forward to spending seven days at Hewnoaks Artist Residency this September. Each resident gets their own cabin, situated on the eastern shore of Kezar Lake in Lovell, Maine. No wifi, no phone service and lots of time to focus.

All images courtesy of the artist and Grant Wahlquist Gallery