Biography

J. Jordan Bruns was born in Cincinnati, Ohio (1982). In 2004, he received a B.F.A in Painting as well as Illustration at Maryland Institute College of Art, and received his M.F.A. in Painting at Indiana University in 2007. Apart from his current body of work, he is an accomplished landscape painter, spending 8 months living out of his car painting North America. His current work focuses on the cycle of growth and destruction, both human and nature. His catalyst for the metaphor is derived largely from his personal experiences, while his imagery resulted from living and working in Florence in the summer of 2007. His exhibitions have been viewed across the United States from a solo show in the Indiana University Art Museum to the Foundry Art Center in St. Charles, MO. Currently, he is the Studio Manager of The Yellow Barn Studio and Gallery, a resident artist in the Chautauqua Tower in Glen Echo Park, and the director of “An Evening with the Arts: A Benefit for the Children’s Inn at NIH”, a nonprofit event raising money for art supplies for sick children at the NIH. In 2011, he was a finalist for the Bethesda Painting Award.

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Artist Statement

I am fascinated with creating dualities; destruction and rebirth, order and chaos, old and new, serious and whimsical, remembering and forgetting. Often what drives the paintings are the paradoxes that are created when these dialectics intertwine.

The materials used in the paintings are meant to emphasize these dualities. When chaotic hardware store paints juxtaposed with meticulous oil paint, the images are a blend of uncontrollable/unrecognizable with precise/distinguishable imagery. The painting process itself flips between making order and chaos. Sometimes the unpredictable paints work well and help with my artistic goal, other times it feels like they have banded together in a mutiny against me. The paintings are finished when all of the elements, all of the dialectics, and all of the different mediums have harmony.

Awards and Recognition

2011- Bethesda Painting Semifinalist
2010- Individual Artist Grant, from Montgomery County
2009- Trawick Semifinalist
2008- Artist in Residence, Glen Echo Park, Glen Echo Maryland
2008- Group Four Award, Foundry Art Center, St. Charles, MO
2007- Bruns, Jordan “New Painting”, Creative Quarterly No7.
2003- Merit Award, Juried Undergraduate Show, Maryland Institute College of Art
2001-03- Achievement Award, Maryland Institute College of Art
2000-04- Trustee Award, Maryland Institute College of Art