Self Portrait in Progress Print

About Jesse Vachon: A multi-genre artist, photographer, designer and conservationist, Jesse's work visualizes conflict between natural and manmade environments using intimate, emotional imagery evocative of an extraordinarily connected but increasingly socially dissociative world. Jesse explores unifying roots of cultural identity and self-expression across time and borders, rather than traditional takes centered on endemic cultures, geographic locations and traditions. Recent work seeks to understand stereotypes entrapped by stigma, gender, social conformity, global socialization, identity manipulation, sub-immigration and American consumerism. These concepts are visualized as expressionist works centered on the human tendency toward "emotional recall" which prioritizes physiological and psychological interpretations and memories as paramount to actual events. Most works depict isolated characters during moments of intense internal reflection or confusion as a means of deconstructing universal emotional truths - core elements of a more collective human experience. From the artist: "I paint sub-reality. Ideas, feelings and psychology twisting and churning beyond visual artifacts, impeding intuition. Life, art, it should all be about embracing - instead of resisting - our impermanence."