Jimbo Blachly
The activity of drawing is primary to Jimbo Blachly’s work. In addition to individual drawings and watercolors, he has kept daily notebooks and sketchbooks which make up a large visual diary going back decades. Blachly states: “The responsiveness of line and mark making to the fluidity of thought. The economy of means-ink and reed pen or pencil and the compact portability of small notebooks means I am almost never without the ability to draw or make a quick notation in my day-to-day life. Drawing for me is a mirror, reflecting the relationship between the perceiving mind, the hand and the myriad phenomena be it oak leaves, mosquitoes, memories or burning forests ”
Over the past several years Blachly has frequently focused on the parks near his home in upper Manhattan. His paintings, notebooks, watercolors and small objects reflect his ongoing exploration of the genre of landscape and examines a variety of approaches to notions of representation and abstraction.
“I am continually searching for an intimate correspondence between the landscape and myself. There is an attempt to record both a sense of time and an aspect of space. A desire to create a marker, memento or token of an experience of a particular place/situation that also opens out to a generalized experience in this ecologically fraught time.”
In addition to direct visual observation, auditory information, time of day (or night), weather, etc…, art history, music theory and contemporary poetics also function as prompts for Blachly’s process.
Jimbo Blachly (b. 1961) is an artist living in New York City, his installations, performances and objects have been exhibited at the Drawing Center, Franklin Furnace, The New Museum, P.S.1 MOMA, The SculptureCenter in N.Y.C. and Catherine Clark gallery in San Francisco. Blachly participated in The Drawing Center’s Open Sessions program 2014-2016 cycle. In 2011 he had an exhibition of his paintings at Winkleman Gallery in New York.
His work is included the Collections of: Beinecke Library, Yale University; Columbia University; Spenser Collection, The New York Public Library; Fine Arts Library, Harvard University; Newberry Library, Chicago; Amherst College Library.
A limited edition book of his drawings is set to be published in 2021.
Orchard #8, 2021, Ink and oil on linen, 12 x 14 inches
Green Hills with Yellow Horizon, 2022, Ink and oil on linen, 8 x 10 inches
Orchard #13, 2021, Ink and oil on linen, 12 x 14 inches
Hangout Hollow, 2022, Ink and oil on linen, 12 x 13 inches
Full Moon Isham Park NYC April 7, 2020 #3, 2020, Ink and watercolor on paper, 8 x 5 inches
Inwood Hill Looking West Toward Darkened Eastern Side, January 10, 2021, 2021, Ink and watercolor on paper, 8 x 5 inches
Inwood Hill Park, August 22, 2020, 2020, Ink and watercolor on paper, 8 x 5 inches
Inwood Hill Park, April 14th, 2020, 2020, Ink and watercolor on paper, 5 x 8 inches
Inwood (Moon Drawings), 2018, Ink and watercolor on paper
Inwood (Moon Drawings), 2018, Ink and watercolor on paper
Maine (Moon Drawings), 2019, Ink and watercolor on paper