Artist Statement

Jia Christopher (b. 1984)

Granite Bay & Placerville, California

I'm a compulsive daily painter. I chase elusive memories across canvas, creating layers of acrylic pigment that is poured, dragged, and scraped back until the canvas fractures into half-recognized glimpses. Swirls collide with etched lines; spontaneous drips challenge hard edges. Each painting embodies a dialogue between chaos and structure, a visual tension that resolves only when the work tells me it's done.

My practice explores memory’s fragmented nature, testing how far I can push a composition toward disorder before it snaps into harmony. Intuition and accident are as integral as deliberate mark-making, leaving visible traces of earlier decisions as testimony to process.

My art isn't storytelling; it’s sensation evoking. A successful painting begins on a visceral level, then resonates, echoing like a familiar but unplaceable melody. Viewers oscillate between unease and wonder, abstraction and landscape, memory and imagination, mirroring the same creative friction that compels me to keep painting.

Raw, dynamic, honest.