There are some places that evoke a sense of familiarity in almost everyone. Whether it’s an airport waiting room, parking lot, or gas station, we have found ourselves in these places and have some kind of memory attached to them.
Artist Jordan West is trying to capture this shared familiarity through his series of paintings, “Places Where We Have Been.” His artworks depict locations, sites, and spaces that any viewer can recognize from an individual standpoint and be prompted to recollect certain events, experiences, and feelings attached to them.
All the places featured in West’s works have been personally experienced by the artist, documented in the form of photography, and then “edited and realized by paint.”
“Through this process of personal encounter and artistic transposition, I reduce and clarify description of space and experience, a stylized representation of reality, a mechanical facsimile, a simulacrum; while maintaining a reflection of the notions of fate, the sublime, isolation, dream, memory, vision, and history,” West explains on his website.
West, who describes himself as a self-taught artist, currently lives and works in New Mexico. He frequently shares his new works on social media and has been featured in group exhibitions and solo shows in art galleries across the United States. He also published a selection of his paintings in the book Places Where We Have Been, which also represents a collection of the artist’s “notes, essays, statements, and thoughts.”
