Somewhere very close to the Tuckahoe River, there is a 200-year-old grey wooden house, which is the workplace and home of John Joseph Mitchell (b.1989, Somers Point, NJ). In the bright front parlour, little paintings on panel are dotted all over the wall, they are hung in groups of two or three. Between them they tell a visual tale of the New Jersey landscape, the people who live there, and moments of quiet contemplation in Upper Township.
In his vignettes, Mitchell captures the things that can be so often taken for granted. A bird migrates across water, a lamp is switched on, a tree shudders in the wind, a chair rocks in the sitting room. As Mitchell puts it:
“I like little stories, glimpses, moments details… in my painting I am trying to encapsulate the most micro, finite moment possible. For me this is just as deep as the macro, the infinite, the humongous.”
His wooden panels are painstakingly hand-made, each panel sanded, stained and primed, and set within a hand-painted frame – the process of preparation, almost as ritual in itself, is carried out by the artist in his workshop above the studio. Small works in pastel on card boxes and monotypes on paper emerge in the same way, carefully and quietly over time - always made in series and subtly different from each other.
Mitchell’s work nods to a number of acknowledged influences, notably the Nabis painters, Japanese printmaking and in the American lineage the likes of Milton Avery, Edward Hopper and Horace Pippin, but his touch is uniquely his own.
Ingleby was pleased to present Mitchell’s work for the first time as part of the INSTALMENTS series, which remained on view during the summer months of 2024.