Coming to Links Bridge Vineyards:
Arlington abstract painter and instructor Bryan Jernigan came to the DMV from rural Oklahoma more than 35 years ago and his upcoming solo show called “Sound of Line” will debut at Links Bridge Vineyards in Thurmont, MD on Saturday, April 5, 2025.
“When I came to Washington, D.C. to live, it wasn’t my first time, but I had only visited once before,” Jernigan said. “Like most young people, I planned to make my name professionally and move on or move back to where I was raised. But D.C. had other plans for me, I guess. Instead, I saw most of my friends peel off and return home, taking back a little piece of urbanity with them. Unlike them, I absorbed the realities of living here – internalizing the highs and lows, taking in the triumphs and suffering through the realities of living the city life, digging in and getting to learn about cultures separate and apart from my own and enduring the everyday realities of things as mundane as seemingly unending traffic commutes.”
Jernigan said coming from the country but choosing to live a city life shaped how he sees the world and how he responds to it in his art.
“In this series – that comprises more than 50 original works on paper and wood panel – the things I noticed most were lines; how they keep us connected, but at the same time how tenuous they are,” he said. “They are less about real things and more about my responses to the things I see - power lines that carry communications from all who use them or lines in pavement that show the age of some parts of the city. The pieces have a gritty feel to them, which is another aspect of living in the city, this juxtaposition between the dirty and the pristine.”
The pieces that span from 12-inch to 3-feet squares include expanses of vibrating actions, scratchy marks and calm respites of undulating non-colors punctuated by bold vibrancy.
“Living in a city is often chaotic, but we do our best to control that craziness in our daily lives. I want the pieces to feel like the embodiment of city living. An homage, so to speak,” Jernigan said. “I hope they are exciting and make viewers feel something akin to a car crash on an otherwise uneventful commute. They are real and they are palpable, and I hope they will resonate with others who live here. We are all different – different backgrounds, different ethnicities – but we all share the same experience of living here and navigating it and getting by.”
Jernigan’s pieces have already received critical acclaim. One of them was chosen by juror Jeffrey W. Allison, the Paul Mellon Collection Educator and Director, Statewide Programs and Exhibitions at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) for the McGuffey Art Center’s Mid Atlantic Juried Exhibition in Charlottesville.
“I’d say one of the artist’s worst fears is that they will muster up the courage to be vulnerable enough to create a body of work and then it gets a bad reception,” the artist said. “So, I entered a show with one of them who offered a well-regarded juror I knew it would be a good test. Happily, I was rewarded by having him choose my piece to include in the show. That little test helped me realize I was on the right track with this series.”
Links Bridge Vineyards will host an opening reception with an artist talk between 1 and 3PM on Saturday, April 5 and the show runs until Friday, April 27. See all the works online at www.bryanjernigan.com.
