Story by Oriana Turley, Photos by Caroline McCarty

Marquis brings a creature to life on a canvas. by Caroline McCarty

Twenty eight year old Jonathan Marquis stands amid brightly colored paintings, scraps of comic book characters and cups of paint. He is finishing up what will be an eight piece show that will take place March 5th, and again on April 2nd, at the Ceretana Gallery on the Northside of Missoula, Montana.

Pointing at the Moon, the name of the exhibition, is a collection of works that explores the relationship between comic book characters and religious figures. Marquis says “putting these two images together asks questions and develops a relationship between the spiritual and profane.”

In creating pieces that interact with the onlookers, Marquis says he hopes to create an installation that draws people into art as an experience.

“By presenting these two things together; providing space for people to engage it, to create their own stories and have their own experience,” he said. “I want to create live objects that can be engaged and you have an interaction with it.”

Initially Marquis says he intended to make a set of abstract paintings. A recent rediscovery of comics got him thinking about the power of the characters, of these “mythical figures from mythical ends.” There is so much going on with these characters, he says, so much emotion and passion. These qualities, he says, religious figures also have.
By including both in his pieces, Marquis hopes to draw the viewer into the story of the art. This includes the story of the artist and the process through which the piece was developed. The goal is an interactive environment. The artist, the art and the audience are all experiencing, and creating, their own story as the show goes on. Though known as a painter in the artistic community, Marquis is reluctant to call his new work a collection of paintings.

“To me it seems more like found object sculptures,” he said. “Like I am organizing natural elements rather than painting, I am just using paint as another tool.”

Marquis says he identifies his work more as shallow sculptures than anything else. Using photo imagery, Marquis says, helps bring life into his artwork. Layers of texture, color and bold images bring depth to what would otherwise be seen as just a painting.

“I am doing different sorts of artwork in one,” he said. “Each process in an experiment that pushes the painting on. You never exactly know how it’s going to line up until its said and done.”

Some of the works he has been working on for over a year, and some have taken him just under a month to create, and others are still evolving.

“All artwork in an expression of experience and I am bringing that to light,” Marquis said. “It’s all about the experience.”

Pointing at the moon is the result of an evolving artistic story. His love of nature inspires Marquis to strive toward being like nature rather than to try and paint nature itself. He says the non-language experience is the essence of nature unfolding. During his process of creating finished pieces for the show, Marquis says he merely was creating a set of conditions for nature to unfold and express itself. This is a process that, he says, we are all a part of.

Marquis is holding an industrial paintbrush dipped in a clear matted finish. His plaid shirt is tucked neatly into his jeans, and as he makes broad strokes with the brush as he speaks.

“As humans we think we are above or beyond nature but we are it, we are nature. We are all part of this experience,” he says. “It isn’t just about me, it’s about you [the audience] just as much, and the action of it all.”

To participate in Pointing at the Moon during the upcoming First Friday events, go to Ceretana Studios at 801 Sherwood St. in Missoula. Tucked neatly among train tracks and industrial buildings, the historic grain elevator, that now serves as an artists’ collective, provides an unique space for such an artistic experience.