I began creating this work in August of 2019 in anticipation of showing it in December of 2020. This gave me the luxury of a full year to create. I wanted to create works that had the expansive presence of paintings on canvas, but with the sketchy immediacy of works on paper. As I thought about what to paint I contemplated what kind of content I might explore, whether it would have political import, or more accurately, if I should continue my explorations and depictions of the Trump phenomenon? I also contemplated the fact that this work would go on exhibit shortly after the 2020 election and my thinking was that if Trump were not reelected, any reference to him would be dated, meaningless and uninteresting. If he were reelected, then the work might have more relevance. I then decided to try to strike a balance and think about the energies and impulses that the Trump world view had generated or stimulated, rather than obsess over the man.

I had slowly and reluctantly referenced and depicted Donald Trump into my imagery throughout his tenure as president of the United States. It took a few years into his term for me to go there and then I built up speed. By the end of the summer 2019 I was fully into things. I wanted to title my show of, as of yet, unrealized pieces; “Jack Ass” and this pivoted me in the direction of considering creatures or animals as the actors in the daily drama of Trumptopia. It also opened up for me an avenue that might allow for less commitment towards the post election conundrum of trying to predict the outcome and land squarely on point as a visionary artist or futurist. It felt to me that with this animal reference I could revisit much older motifs too and blend in current concerns and lay a path for any kind of future that should come to pass post election.

Then the pandemic happened. The creatures soon became more of an expression of how nature might intercede into the society, psychology and politics of a culture. Though we now had a battle against a devastating natural foe the struggle became a reflection of our human tendency to blame one another or blame forces that we invent as way to create and fulfill our various preconceived narratives. I lost a lot of steam at this point in the late Spring of 2020, for many reasons. I firstly began to assume that this show would likely be cancelled and further, it was hard to focus with confidence on anything, with an atmosphere of social unrest and politicization of every new development. But also I had worked on these large-scale gouache paintings on paper for a full year and had the world had been different than it was I would have been bringing it to a close soon anyway.

Looking back it felt like a coming of age type experience. The idea of creating a body of work that might reference an individual, then modifying this approach by inserting motifs of anthropomorphic figures, became, after all, a larger experience of feeling the environment transformed, intensified or “Jacked”. What came next after the 2020 election became for me so anxiety ridden that I could no longer work on large time intensive pieces anyway. I downsized to diary-like daily drawings that spoke to my more immediate sensations. Though I generally do this fairly regularly anyway and created daily drawings while working on the large gouache works too, the post-election/pandemic peak period was strongly reduced in terms of any larger ambitious creations. In this respect the “Jacked” series was a unique body of work begun in a more innocent period that reflects in a strangely anticipatory way, a transformation or zeitgeist. A moment of confidence, if that could even have been a way to describe our collective state of mind in the Trumptopia/pre pandemic period, suffering a collapse or sense of being overrun by forces and beings. In the end and showing this work a year after its completion, I see the elements that were in my work years before the Trump presidency, as resonating more than ever as new elements co joined them and we continue to experience the transformations of a post Trump era. As we all will inevitably stumble along as humans on this planet and maybe even as Americans anticipating the next election cycle, my creatures, motifs and characters will live on, here presenting various timeless tableaux that I now see will easily inform us and lay the groundwork for the next drama.

Kenny Cole