Jim Levy

b. 1948
Lives and works in Traverse City, Michigan

Creating an image is not like anything else I do. I believe these paintings come from a part of my brain that I can’t necessarily access any other way. Maybe they’re an illustration of what it looks like inside my head. Art is really the only way we can see what another person sees.

After practicing medicine for 40 years, I’m used to assembling data and looking for a recognizable disease pattern. That kind of analytical approach does not apply to this art. This has more to do with imagination, spontaneity, accidents, and mistakes.

I’m an abstract expressionist inspired by Mark Rothko and David Smith. My works do not have formal titles in the usual sense because they are meant to be images without content or context. The viewer is invited to bring his/her own interpretation, experience, and emotional response.

Some of my paintings look (to me) different depending on how they’re oriented on the wall. I know what I like, and sometimes indicate that on the back of the painting, but the owner of the painting decides how it should be displayed and where.

One of the problems with exhibiting art in a gallery for sale is that it might be purchased by some Republican plutocrat. There I can imagine it hanging on a wall overlooking such a person and his or her Republican plutocratic friends eating expensive steaks and drinking fine scotch and talking about controlling other people’s lives for their own profit. This, alas, would be without the artist’s approval but beyond the artist’s control.