EYE-LIKEY VISITS with
Jim Houser
ABOUT
Jim Houser lives and works in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Houser's paintings are the system by which he actively catalogs the images and noises which command his attention. His installations create a mapping system, cataloguing the contents of his head over the course of a particular period of time. His interests include: listening to the cadence of speech, science and science fiction, sickness and disease, plants and animals, sport, time travel, ghosts, the art of children, secrets, radio, codes and code breaking, words that sound beautiful and mean something terrible, and words that sound horrible but mean something wonderful. Houser’s paintings are visual poems by which he communicates his innermost thoughts and feelings; words are involved at times, but not in the traditional sense. By cataloging his experiences through a unique pictoral language, the artist has created his own iconography. As a result, the collective imagery acts as a cognitive presentation of highly interpretive ideas. Houser’s signature aesthetic contains elements of stylized figures and hand-drawn typography along with patterned line work—all rendered with clean precision using a gradient of tints and shades within his minimal palette of harmonious flat colors. When his sculptural pieces—which include hand-made guitars and flowerpots—are combined with his paintings, it becomes clear that all of the works are associative and directly related.
