Jon Carter Fine Art

Jonathan Carter 513-968-0806 [email protected] www.instagram.com/joncarterfineart Artists Biography My mixed media work seeks to highlight urban blight, inequities in housing, and the need for urban forestation. The latter includes urban gardening combined with fresh produce markets to help alleviate nutritional deserts, as well as the need for more wooded areas to act as nature preserves and soften the urban environment by providing contemplative areas. Urban blight causes blight in the mind, with nutritional deserts, housing inequity, gentrification, deforestation, and disenfranchisement plaguing major cities. My task as a fine artist is to bring attention to injustice. These are injustices. Why does a handicapped person have to travel to the other side of the city in all kinds of weather to get fresh produce? The totality of this experience may mean being caught out in deep summer in a blighted urban area without a single tree for shade. Brick and concrete hold heat, so it's liable to be much hotter than air temperature due to surface heat radiation. This can cause dehydration, and even death. In northern cities elderly and handicapped are forced to travel in the snow to obtain good food. That is unacceptable. Food delivery exists, but is too expensive for those who already must decide between food and medicine. Help me in my cause by purchasing my work, and I will donate a percentage to a cause striving to alleviate one or more of the problem areas I mentioned. Jonathan Carter was born in the metropolitan Cincinnati, Ohio area. While growing up in the inner city he became fascinated with the urban environment and the often colorful characters who populated it. Jonathan began venturing out with his sketch pad as early as high school trying to catch an impression of his feelings about the sights surrounding him. He has always been drawn to the mystique of inner city streets, people lingering lazily in front of an old bar on a hot summer evening, kids playing noisily, and the constant din and bantor of the inner city seemed to him like a musical chorus. Sketching lead him to focus on painting by his mid twenties. His fundamental design skills were developed while studying at the University of Cincinnati's college of Design, Art, Architecture and Planning. Although his initial focus as a painter was on portraits and figurative work portraying street people he encountered on his urban journeys, that focus gradually shifted to include the surrounding environment. Landscape painting with a focus on urban street scenes became his calling, and he began to work in oils. He seeks to bring this urban world to light for us as a visceral experience, as well as a place of conflicting feelings gleaned from sublime and unexpected beauty contrasted with the unpredictable and perhaps dangerously chaotic nature of urban life. Jonathan also trained as a research lab technician, earning his bachelor's degree in chemistry in 2009. He has worked many years in consumer products research and development. He brings this analytical discipline and capacity to his approach to painting through rigorous on site preparatory studies, a solid work ethic combined with organizational skills that allow him to not only keep a neat studio, but price projects. His work is in private collections around the greater Cincinnati area. He has been a supporter of ArtWorks Gallery's summer murals program by contributing small paintings to their annual fund raiser, “Secret.” He currently lives and paints in Cincinnati, and is actively involved with pursuing urban explorations in oil and mixed media. • He recently participated in a group art show March 16, 2019 at Grace Episcopal Church in Cincinnati, Ohio entitled, “The Shift, Evolution of Grace.” • Jonathan recently participated in the “SOS" group show May 31 – June 9, 2019 at the Art Academy Gallery in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio • He showed work in a group portrait show June 7 – August 16, 2019 at Red Tree Gallery and Coffeehouse 3210 Madison Rd., Cincinnati, Ohio • Jonathan is a principal artist at Gallery 708, 2643 Erie Ave., Cincinnati, Ohio 45208