Jamie Sweetman's exhibition Symmetries opened on Saturday evening at the Stone Rose Gallery in downtown Long Beach, California. Located at 342 East 4th Street, it will run until October 5th, 2013. Gallery hours are Wednesdays & Thursdays, from noon - 6 PM, & Fridays & Saturdays, from noon - 7 PM.
I feel such an intense artistic connection to these works...even down to the fact that we share some of the same titles (Bleeding Heart comes immediately to mind). Like Jamie, I'm also preoccupied with making visible that which lies beneath the flesh's surface, & although our mediums are quite different, I completely relate to her assured handling of simple drawing materials. In her competent hands, colored pencils, water soluble crayon, & gouache layer together on Mylar to create poetic amalgams of bone, synapse, & muscle that often combine with floral or pelagic entities. Symmetry is of course inherent, but beyond that, Jamie's work is (as theorist James Elkins elegantly phrases it) pure "visceral seeing."
