Jay Worth Allen

— Artist Statement —
I was born. When I was about 6, I started drawing. Later, I started painting. That's still what I'm doing.
What I know, I put into my work. I am interested in visible or tangible things that ARE, rather than Opinion. In my work, there are pre-formed, conventional, depersonalized, factual elements — impartial objects. I am concerned with the wholeness of a thing remaining within the boundaries of knowledge.
It is within this boundary that I strive to conceal and reveal known objects at the same time. We have an existing language of words, signs, symbols, shapes, formulas, treatises, poems and the like — whole bodies of belief and knowledge that can, presumably, describe and penetrate anything and everything. Yet, I am forced to recognize that the system which enables me to form a piece of art and to think coherently cannot define how I uniquely think or feel, or even how I picture myself and everything outside myself.
The plane of my work has always been real things — REAL MOMENTS RESTING IN TIME, where the ideational and perceptual worlds intersect to form image, idea, icon, and space, and — where I, and therefore the viewer, is projected through to another reality.
Technique is inextricably tied t...

Miscellaneous Schooling and Apprenticeships:
North Texas State, Memphis College of Art, Southwestern and Dallas Seminaries, Oxford (UK), Ansel Adams, Duane Michals, David Adams Pond-Smith, Ed Ruscha, plus a bunch of courses and individual studies, which meant more to me than someone reading this stuff.

Miscellaneous Exhibitions :
Texas: Houston Museum of Fine Art, Dallas Museum of Fine Art, Carson's Art Gallery, Greenhills Gallery, Read Stemmel Gallery, Fort Worth Museum of Art, Tiburon Gallery, William Campbell Contemporary Art, George H. W. Bush Presidential Library, Dallas Convention Center, University of Texas at Austin College of Liberal Arts, Southern Methodist University.
Tennessee: Memphis Collage of Art, Brooks Museum of Art (Memphis), Art Village, Ocean Way (Nashville), House of Blues Studios (Nashville), Memphis Botanic Gardens, Mary Miles Loveless Arts, Hutchinson School.
Arkansas: Olivia Cromwell Galleries (Little Rock, Memphis), William J. Clinton Presidential Library.
Georgia: Soho-Myriad Gallery.
Arizona: Tiburon Gallery.
California: Luguna Gallery of Fine Art, House of Blues (LA), House of Blues Studios (LA).
NYC: Agora Gallery (Chelsea), Macinroe Gallery, Lewin Gallery, Soho Gallery.
Michigan: Studio 139. London (UK): The Gallery of Soho.
Scotland (UK): Conservatory of Art, Crage Gallery.
France: Bjorklund's (Champagne, Le Prince).
Universities: Johns Hopkins University, University of Texas Gallery, Middle Tennessee State University, Southern Methodist University, Memphis College of Art.