Check out Jonathan Harkham’s Artwork

1975 we immigrated to Los Angeles from Sydney Australia. I was 3 years old. We lived in an apt on Hollywood blvd.My dad is an Iraqi Jew my mom is from the south of New Zealand. I pretty much felt like an alien growing up in the city. Different customs, different perspectives and the other kids around me always thought I was real weird. I talked different, I dressed different. I would spend my weekends taping boxes with my dad in the shipping department downtown. In high school I got heavy into punk rock, ska music and the great old school American blues. My mom was supportive of my art but when I made some friends from Echo Park that accepted me and treated me like a brother that basically changed my life forever. I got into street art and found a voice and identity that felt my own. A teacher took me to see the Francis Bacon retrospect at LACMA when I was around 16. That gave me inspiration, purpose and direction. I started looking at paintings whenever I could and got deep into German expressionism, and the Harlem Renaissance painters, sculptors, writers and musicians. It was when I found the paintings of Chaim Soutine and William H. Johnson that I knew where I wanted to be creatively. I tried finding colleges over the next few years that could help me realize my passion and it was pretty dismal. No one seemed to be talking about the historical context of painting. For instance, who was Soutine looking at and learning from ? What was William Johnson doing with his brush that electrified the canvas that way ? How could I learn something relevant to inform my creative weaknesses? It was all pretty much conceptual or illustrative/design wherever I went so I just gave up the search.

 In 1995 when I was 23 years old, a talented girlfriend from Texas walked me into the New York Studio School of Painting and Drawing and Sculpture in NYC. I signed up for the program having finally found a school run by artists and students that cared about the things that were important to me and my painting. I started down the historical/traditional rabbit hole and it blew my mind. I kept coming back over the years whenever I could afford it. I moved back to Los Angeles in 2009 for good and in 2012 I got an opportunity to build some studios in downtown and moved into one and it’s been my home base ever since.

I paint and draw large and small portraits, landscapes and still lives from perception with oil paint on canvas or wood and whatever drawing materials feel right in the moment. I don’t think there’s any medium stronger than painting when it comes to communicating my life experience. And for me oil paint has almost mystical properties in its depth of color, it’s tactility and it’s malleability. It has characteristics that allow me to “sing” or “scream” or “whisper” and because of that I have always toiled with it as my primary weapon of choice. Also painting from life is a conundrum of sorts when you think about life in its depth and mass and gravity. For me any type of success in painting relies on being able to carry that 3 dimensional experience onto a 2 dimensional surface without being a “literalist” or a “realist”. This makes the paint perform in a way that provokes the eyes and brain to see it as space and material imbued with mass, form, and weight even though you know you are looking at paint on a flat surface.

To me “Venice” punk rock from Los Angeles carries that unique gangster skater sound of the streets when I was 13 years old. It is distinctly unique to their geographic and social influences…Like the early American blues pioneers, Punk rock in the 80’s was a mad powerful force in this country. There is a sense that you not only hear their voice but also the “world” in which the artists comes from. This is a powerful mode of creativity that reflects ones surroundings as much as their internal mechanisms.

I think one of the greatest challenges for artists these days is understanding the responsibility one has to history. Art history isn’t a big thing in this country, we don’t get it in high school. We’re lucky to get a taste of it in college. To understand why it’s relevant to have context and support from those that came before. I think an aspiring artist would gain so much for example, from studying the ancient Roman wall paintings in the Villa of Mysteries in Pompeii. Only when we realize how great an undertaking it is to tell the story of our time can we be in a position to pass the torch on to future generations.

My work is on Instagram and on my website. I welcome walk throughs at the studio. I do a lot of portrait painting (anyone interested in my work or being painted can email me). I also do drawing/painting class from live models here at the studio in downtown LA for perceptual drawing/painting.