Jack Bishop "Road Trip Playlist" Opening Reception

Newzones is pleased to present the opening for Canadian contemporary painter Jack Bishop's solo exhibition "Road Trip Playlist".

Bishop’s paintings have featured the recurrent subject matter of driving for some time now, but his current body of work has additionally become autobiographical. They are – in a sense – family portraits of Bishop, his wife, and their dog in the car, and are repeated motifs of what matters most to Bishop. Inspired by years of regularly travelling the highway back and forth between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, the openness of the highway and it’s segments of scabby foliage has become the mise-en-scene for these works. Bishop states “I have always like the idea of a painting not being defined by a specific place, in the way it could be ‘anywhere’.”

This series is a departure from Bishop’s use of photographic references:

"As I was inspired by memory, I came to the conclusion that depicting ‘realism’ no longer interested me, and adopted a more intuitive approach. I see these works as a mix of introspective subject matter with materially based explorations of paint and colour theory. Using florescent and iridescent paint, the surface becomes activated, where colour becomes transcendent, carving light and space into abstraction."

Speaking on additional inspiration for his new body of work, Bishop notes the importance of music:

"While creating the works I was also channeling some favourite music for inspiration, somehow psychological and also a more personal sentiment than what I’ve made in the past. The appropriated song lyrics which I’ve titled the works after, create a pop-culture reference which frames the paintings into a conceptual narrative; giving a level of atmosphere to the work and inclusivity to the viewer. I like to think about the paintings like tracks of music from a personal playlist you would listen to while coasting down the highway on the road trip."

Jack Bishop is grateful to acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts in the creation of "Road Trip Playlist".

Jack Bishop was born in Saint John, New Brunswick and currently lives and works in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He received in Bachelor of Fine Arts from NSCAD University in 2007. He is a three time recipient of the Canada Council for the Arts Creation Grant, including most recently in 2021, which supported his body of work "Road Trip Playlist". He has exhibited nationally across Canada and been collected by many private collections.