Artist's Statement

Pyramid Series XXV

Pyramid Series IX-GR

AIDS Series Victim

Stations of the Cross

Most recently I have been able to devote my entire time to work in my studio. For someone who has spent many years in art education and arts administration, this has been a unique experience. I now have time to experiment and explore areas that before were too much of a luxury. Sometimes exploration leads nowhere and I also allow myself the privilege of abandoning the fruitless.

After completing work for a major exhibition last fall, I pulled in the reigns and worked for a time in black and white on a reasonably medium scale. My goal was to see how far I could push those limitations and still convey the ideas I had in mind. Setting up those boundaries really had an unexpected effect. I found that they in fact gave me a sense of freedom that made me examine and find new ways to express myself. I played around with new dimensions that led me to rethink scale. Surfaces became simpler and deeper and the sense of control over the spontaneous became more and more apparent.

In a word my work is structural. Sometimes the grid is visible and other times it disappears within the work. So whether the work is inspired by architecture as in the Louver Series or the Kimono Series or the Strata Series, it is all designed to be in structural balance. This structural balance is a key element in achieving the order through harmony and balance of shape, texture and color. At the same time there is a story to be told in each work and the artist works in parallel methods balancing one with the other.

The story within the Louver works tells the viewer that light plays and dances between the slats; that spatial elements are achieved by colors that pop out and draw back; that textures create variety and soothe the eye, but it is structure that creates the rhythmic and sensual whole that continues to engage the viewer. The Strata Series and the Red Square works are part of the same exploration that attempts to show us what lies beneath the earth and what it can tell us of our distant past. Here again is the story being told in part by the interplay of luscious fragments of texture and color locked together like pieces of broken shards or parts of ancient walls.

The culture of the Orient holds a special place in my artistic soul. I love the simplicity and geometry of their buildings and furniture, their pottery and their gardens. The kimono is structured to be a very simple T shape but they are often embellished with the spectra of nature where flowers and birds play against a rich background of woven richness and color. My work in the Kimono Series keeps the simplicity of the shape and enriches the surface with playful figures that exists along side simple geometric patterns.

William Martin Jean
(From the book Memory & Metaphor: The Art of William Martin Jean – Past Into Present, by Elizabeth McClelland)