Artist Statement and Contact
Photo by Jorge Colombo
Johnny Doley (he/him) grew up surrounded by oak trees in Virginia, and now lives in the sugary arms of a maple tree in Chicago. An avid birder, he spends his free mornings at Montrose Point, hanging out with the vireos and flycatchers.
He has exhibited nationally, including The Mildred Complexity(ity) (Narrowsburg NY), Comfort Station (Chicago IL), Compound Yellow (Oak Park IL), Produce Model (Chicago, IL), and Laconia Gallery (Boston MA). He is also one of the founders of Tiny Table Gallery, an artist-run transient exhibition project focusing on small-scale sculpture, and has curated exhibitions with performative events at Watershed Art and Ecology (Chicago IL), Ohklahomo (Chicago IL), and the Chicago Athletics Association (Chicago IL) among others.
His work is in the collections of the Boston Public Library (Boston MA) and Mildred’s Lane (Beach Lake PA). He holds a BFA in Painting from Boston University (2019), and an MFA in Sculpture from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2023). He currently is the co-director of Tiny Table Gallery and a lecturer in Sculpture at SAIC.
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Artist Statement
My artistic practice focuses on the entanglement of living and non-living things, and the ways that anthropocentric ideologies can be broken down though actions of care. By learning from, or collaborating with, artists of different species, I explore alternative models of knowing/being/loving. Founded from a porosity learned in Quaker meeting houses as a child, my work is an attempt to listen, learn, and participate in the messy tangles of inter-species/inter-thing relationships that make up the more-than human world.
Deeply rooted in the tradition of landscape painting, my work approaches the representation of nature through material, gesture, and form. I approach landscape not though a visual representation of space, but by depicting the hard-to-see meshwork of entanglements that make up a place’s ecology and identity. My work questions the very concept of nature and pushes back against the humanistic othering that happens when we see ourselves as apart-from rather than within. My practice is playful, cross-disciplinary, and celebrates the kinship between myself, my materials, and the critters/things around me.
Please send any purchase inquiries, questions, or expressions of joy to either of the following contacts.
Email: doley.johnny@gmail.com
Instagram: @johnnydoley