JBLombardo Artist 1970-Present Day

Origins of Real Art

I am a purveyor of the unconscious. From the first time paint touched canvas at the bequest of the muse that guided my hand, I knew that I would paint and make images that are at once timeless and that contain a unique connection to all of reality, not just our limited perception and experience, but of reality in the all encompassing sense of being universal. You can take that anyway you want. I started painting in 1970 at the request of James Harithas who was then director or the Everson Museum of Art in syracuse. Harithas saw once small painting that I made on a canvas board and wanted to meet me. We talked about art for hours and he offered me an opportunity to do a one man exhibit of figure paintings at his museum. I painted day and night for three years and had my show in August of 1973. I filled one entire gallery room in the sacred upstairs with 15 huge to large figure paintings. My art my imaging making is a spontaneous outburst of the unconscious energy that defines all existence. My images are energy, archetypal energy, the energy that stuff is made of made tangible and real. When I move paint around on a canvas, real or digital, something very strange and compelling happens. The works take on a life of their own. They extend past our limited world, and relate positively and in a very real sense to the very place that defines all existence. I have lived and always live in this very special place.

Like I said, I am a purveyor of the unconscious. I make the things quantum and ethereal become tangible. The incredible fast world of the electric synapse lets me work at the speed that my brain and my being functions. I now make digital art in the same spirit as my painterly exploits of earlier years. I found due to health reasons that I could no longer use oils or even acrylics. After a while they start to hurt your body. We all exist as some part of the greatness of everything. We are all a part of the universe of all existence whether we can see it or not. My inspiration is intuitive by nature, and comes from past space and past time to the quiet and beautiful place that belies all of what we are. Who we are is unimportant.

As an artist and human being, I chose to leave my counterparts and contemporaries behind. I chose to go where the spirit of existence would and will continue to take me. My work makes some uncomfortable, mostly because most people cannot and will not understand it; but it does get under their skin and makes theor nerves crawl if only just a little, some more than others. The fact that viewers cannot understand true beauty and inspiration is not my problem. My only mission was and is to make sincere and real images that come from deep within the unbounded place at the root of all reality. What defines the quantum second the quantum moment is the relation of the hand in unison with the mind as it moves line and color to certain places that correspond to a finished work of art, the coordinates of the space-time continuum made visible. There is a timeless sense to all of this, a place that is at once exciting and calming at the same time. It is where we all are born from.

As we all contain a little piece of totality, the very thing that sustains our existence for however long we are privileged to be here. I have just been lucky enough to have been part of the secret. I have seen and continue to see what it is I see. That much, in this time of total uncertainty, is real and certain. I know what I know, and what I do not know I will try to find out. It takes time and patience, and another circle around the merry-go-round of existence. I think I have done a pretty good job with the task I was handed at birth, and I will continue to try to keep it working. I cannot get away from what defines what I am, any more than you can. I will not apologize for any of this. I will do what I have to do by the hand of inspiration, a very real commodity, and hope and pray that you will fare as well!