Statement
Artist Statement
Hi, I’m Jon Wallace. I grew up in Detroit and now live out in the country in Indiana. This Ink-on-Film medium is still relatively new for me—about six years in—and it actually started by accident while I was preparing for an art show. I realized I didn’t have enough paintings to fill the space, and with only three weeks left, I tore my studio apart trying to figure out how to fix it.
Then it happened: I knocked over a bottle of ink onto a piece of film I normally used for screen printing. I slipped on it, looked down, and saw the first image of what would become this entire body of work.
Even though I was originally trained in animation and character design at the College of Creative Studies back in 2007, this process immediately felt more natural—almost like it had been waiting for me. I’ve been on this path ever since.
Motivation
The motivation for me to create in this medium is to bring people together. It forces them to explore the pieces. The results vary from person to person. I've heard things from "This reminds me of a place I was at in my childhood" to escaping war-torn lands. Strangers sharing intimate details about their lives with each other, and if not that, just hearing what others see. Online doesn’t do the pieces justice, so using macro photography to show multiple perspectives corrects this issue, but even through that, it’s a forced perspective. I'd like to get into as many galleries and shows as possible. I think that the art can bring strangers from different walks together.
Vision
My work can respond to the curatorial theme by inviting viewers into a shared space of interpretation and connection. Ink on Film abstracts don’t present a single narrative; instead, they encourage viewers to project their own memories, emotions, and lived experiences onto the piece. This creates a dialogue between strangers who may come from entirely different backgrounds.
For example, past viewers have seen everything from childhood landscapes to imagery connected to migration or conflict. These radically different interpretations highlight how the same visual form can hold multiple truths. Exhibited together, the works function as catalysts for conversation—each piece acting as a reflective surface where personal histories overlap.
Through macro photography installations, lightbox displays, or large-format prints alongside the originals, I can further expand the theme by showing how perspective shapes meaning. This layered presentation allows the work to speak to themes of memory, identity, transformation, or shared human experience, depending on the curatorial direction, while still centering connection as the core outcome.
