Ink & Essence

“Jack has been working exclusively with an ink made from the husk of butternuts, a material readily available in Northern New England. Intimately involved in the process of creating the inks by gathering the nuts, separating the husks, grinding, boiling, and filtering them to produce the inks, he is taken with their qualities of smooth wetness, subtle tone, and quiet grace. Describing painting as meditation in action, he enjoys exploring space through the subtle use of simple forms that utilize the inks’ tonal variation and earth-like saturation. Despite the subtleties of forms composed in elegant schemes, the paintings pack the distilled emotional densities of dwarf stars. “My work is what it is, nothing more, nothing less.” summarizes the artist, leaving us to ponder his timeless contemporary work, a reduction to ink and essence.”

—Kóan Jeff Baysa, 2003