Jonathan Lasker b. 1948

Jonathan Lasker was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, 1948 and currently lives and works in New York City. He studied at the School of Visual Arts, New York (1975-77) and California Institute of the Arts, Valencia (1977).

 Lasker's paintings have also been exhibited at the Corcoran in Washington, D.C., the Stedelijk in Amsterdam, Documenta IX in Kassel, and the Reina Sofia in Madrid. He has lectured extensively in the United States and Europe, and received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1987 and 1989.

 A critic once wrote that my work asked the same question of its viewer that John Q. Public would ask when looking at an abstract painting. The question being, "What is that supposed to be?" What the critic, Stephen Westfall, meant was that although my forms are abstract, my paintings give viewers suggestions to help them perceive pictorial images in my paintings. Suggestion, of course, being the only way one sees images in a painting, even if the painting is supposedly "realistic." In the case of this series of lithographs, which I call "Ball Figures," round knots of scrawly black lines form ball shapes which are abutted next to one another to make forms which have human, animal, or plant associations. Also, in the backgrounds of these prints there are circles in alternating colors. These circles make patterns which partially fill the page ending in boundaries in the middle of the page forming horizon lines. In spots, groupings of circles are ringed-in by black lines which create subdominant figures in relation to the more pronounced "ball figures." The picture which forms is arrived at by the viewer interpretively rather than literally. -Jonathan Lasker