Gloria Marchini
J.J.CROMER
(1967 | USA)
The self-taught artist J.J. Cromer, born in 1967, spent most of his life in central Appalachia. Now he live on a small farm in Pound, Virginia, where he raise ducks and geese with his wife. He had a master’s degree in creative writing and he worked as a librarian.
From 1998, frustrated with his job, he began working with oil pastels in his spare time and developed a style featuring clothespin-like figures, expressing his concern with ecology. His earlier works are mostly heavy and colorful with figural content or light drawings with printed collage elements and ethereal line drawing. Cromer later began to combine this techniques, creating bold works with shapes reminiscent of landscape and sky. He often recovers his previous works, reusing pieces through collage or reconstructing through composition. Much like the alphabet’s 26 letters, permits endless expression, Cromer believes he can create a wide range of artworks through rearranging specific forms, lines and colours from his earlier works.
He depicts his environmental concerns in a deliberately ambiguous way, encouraging viewers to apply their own life experiences to extract meanings.
J.J. Cromer was the subject of a featured article in the Fall 2010 issue of Raw Vision.
His work is represented in the High Museum of Art; The American Visionary Art Museum; Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art; and The Taubman Museum of Art.
J.J.CROMER
(1967 | USA)
L’artista autodidatta J.J. Cromer , nato nel 1967 , ha trascorso gran parte della sua vita nella zona degli Appalachi. Ora vive in una piccola fattoria a Pound, Virginia, dove alleva anatre e oche con la moglie. Dopo aver conseguito un master in scrittura creativa, ha lavorato come bibliotecario.
Nel 1998, frustrato del suo lavoro, ha iniziato a utilizzare pastelli ad olio per creare figure aventi legami con l’ecologia. Le sue prime opere sono fortemente colorate e ricche di contenuti figurativi o disegni luminosi, arricchiti da collage e segni eterei. Cromer, in seguito, ha cominciato a combinare varie tecniche creando opere audaci con forme rimembranti cieli e paesaggi. Spesso recupera parti dei suoi lavori precedenti attraverso l’utilizzo del collage o ricostruendo la composizione stessa. Simile alle 26 lettere dell’alfabeto, tale tecnica permette di creare infinitamente opere d’arte attraverso la riorganizzazione di specifiche forme, linee e colori, dai suoi lavori precedenti.
Egli descrive le sue preoccupazioni ambientali in modo volutamente ambiguo, incoraggiando in ciò gli spettatori ad applicare le proprie esperienze di vita per farne fuoriuscire i significati.
La rivista Raw Vision ha dedicato un articolo a J.J. Cromer nel suo numero autunnale del 2010.
Le sue opere sono inserite nell’High Museum of Art, all’American Visionary Art Museum, all’Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art, e al Taubman Museum of Art.
