Brian Jermusyk
Notes on Recent Work:

T.J. Clark writes: “…our present means of image production...” is a  “…sealed echo-chamber of lies”.  (The Sight of Death, Yale, 2006) 

We have in the end a responsibility both for the images we make and the ones we choose to live with in our heads.  To spend time working
from masterworks is to spend time in the presence of profoundly enigmatic objects.  It is a way of choosing carefully the company one keeps.
It is practice in humility. It is a manner of resistance.  This is also true of working with the figure and from the model.

In making these transcriptions from masterworks I drew until I exhausted what seems present in the work, only making alterations that felt
intuitively accurate or that helped sustain my interest.  The intricacy and subtleties of a great Titian or Poussin are astonishing.

Historically, drawing is a prelude to painting. It is the more fundamental process.  It is the piano in the room to painting’s symphony.  
At times paper and charcoal seem completely sufficient.  As a child I drew, hour after hour, in the smoothed dirt at the back of the house.

Light and dark retain a silent, archaic eloquence.

Corporeality is profoundly perilous and unsettling.  Did Beckett read Augustine? The bull and the double-headed bird figure entered the
work after a visit to the Mesopotamian collection at the Metropolitan Museum. They continue to linger.

Artist Information

Received MFA Brooklyn College.  Taught at Stonybrook University, Suffolk County Community College, St. Joseph’s College, New York
Academy of Art, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Delaware College of Art and Design, Princeton University.

Lives on Long Island, NY.

Contact Information

bmjer@earthlink.net

Visit Museum

www.thetemporarymuseum.com