Stemming from time spent in the forest as a child and subsequently throughout his life, Jason Van Roo’s practice is an exploration of his relationship to the natural world as a grounding and energizing force. Drawing from both the material and impalpable aspects of wilderness, he works in the vocabulary of found or salvaged wood along with the passage of time, light, and reflection. His use of color and mark-making are not in the pursuit of imitation; rather, they are an effort to arrive at a hidden truth, an intersection of the tangible and intangible.
The resulting paintings are not only documents of ‘deep time’ spent in nature, they also engage with the malleable and organic nature of time itself. Van Roo’s work invites the viewer to let themselves get lost in the deeply rendered layers of acrylic and pastel which lean into the grain of the wood as though the image of the forest could have emerged from the tree itself. This collapsing of the differentiation between material, process, and subject matter subverts the objectivity of time and the arbitrary distinction of what is bound to humanity and what is bound to nature.
Jason Van Roo earned his BFA from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 1997, where he received an Albright Scholarship. He earned his art education license from Alverno College in 2002 and his Master’s in Education from National-Louis University in 2008. Jason draws and paints his experience in nature through intuitive methods. His work reflects a balance between the observable and the unobservable, with reverence for new understandings through subject matter and material.
Jason’s work has been featured in solo exhibitions at Between Two Galleries in Milwaukee, WI, the Wisconsin Union Directorate Gallery at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Fiskum Gallery at the University of Wisconsin-Whiwater. Jason has work in the West Bend Mutual Private Collection and he works in his studio at Var Studios in Milwaukee, WI. He has taught middle and high school art since 2002, and currently teaches at Greendale Middle School in Greendale, WI.
