UNM student Jonathan Grimes hung his first art show of abstract paintings at Winning Coffee Co. last week.
They resemble square, green and gold kaleidoscopic jewels - an impressive and well-executed series for someone with no art training.
"It's kind of a regurgitation of very primal things I don't know how to communicate in any other way except for painting," Grimes said. "I map out a general idea, and then I kind of just completely improvise it and paint as furiously and as thoughtlessly as I can."
The untitled series alludes to his emotions, he said, which all boil down to loneliness, whether in regard to relationships or his hometown of Baltimore.
He started these acrylic paintings in July, using a palette knife in place of a brush.
"I'm still learning how to mix colors," he said. "I used to draw when I was in high school. I was good with realistic drawing. I took one painting class, and I got through three weeks, and the teacher pissed me off. The whole idea of someone telling me how to paint got me so riled up."
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Although he sees the benefit of learning technical skills, it's not going to help his cause, Grimes said.
"This is the weird, unspeakable shit from inside me," Grimes said. "I hope it has some kind of place in the universe besides just in me. I need this shit to exist outside of me."
One painting's negative space has an excess of thick red, compared to the pieces with thinner, green backgrounds.
He likened it to love and confusion in a souring relationship.
"How do you make decisions when it come to matters of the heart?" he said. "I was
confused about what I was perceiving and what I wanted out of the
relationship and how it made me crazy. There's an exposing of cold loneliness. I think loneliness is a large part. It drives you towards a relationship, and it also comes from a relationship."
However, he said his work is refocusing itself more as landscape or atmosphere, rather than dwelling on his inner monster.
"One of the things I'm trying to eke out here is the fact that beauty is often kind of hideous," Grimes said. "You can look at something, and at first glance it might disgust or scare you or freak you out altogether. But there's beauty to be found in the creepiest of crannies."
