Gallery John Lawson 10-11-25 - Time and Space Limited

COMING SOON TO THE TSL GALLERY
MEDITATIONS ON THE HUDSON/ ART AND ARTIFACT
BY JOHN K LAWSON

On view October 11 – November 9, 2025

MEDITATIONS ON THE HUDSON/ ART AND ARTIFACT
by John K Lawson

ARTIST STATEMENT:

On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the coast of Louisiana flooding the city of New Orleans, my home and my artist studio. Seismic events in the life of an artist infiltrate the work—taking it in new directions of depth and breadth.

In this twentieth anniversary year of Katrina, I am filled with both gratitude and deep reflection.

This exhibit, Meditations on the Hudson/Art and Artifact, consists of a selection of works meditating on the theme of time and space. Nietzsche once wrote, “what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger”. Through the time and space that I have experienced since that seminal event, my work has taken me on many journeys through many mediums and I am filled with gratitude as I share them with you, the viewer.

The exhibition begins with the hand drawn penciled mural design based on Hieronymous Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights for a 45 foot bartop which was commissioned in 1999 for the Audubon Hotel on St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans. Shown with the drawing is the actual bartop mural made of recycled mardi-gras beads. This bartop was in use when the waters of Katrina flooded the building, was salvaged after the waters receded and is only now being restored, a vivid artifact of the environmental change we live with. The original clear finish turned brown in the Hurricane waters.

Exploring themes of antiquity, restoration, and the carnival of life, this is the first time this mural will be exhibited since it was shown at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, MD (2004).

Martha’s Message
Oil on Panel, 72″H x 36”W x 1 3/4” D

Garden of Unearthly Delights, 1998 to 2025
Cartoon drawings for beaded mural.
Prismacolor pencils, 13 Drawings on Poster Board, 24”H x 40” W

My meditation continues with a series of nine drawings inspired by the quote from Paul Klee, “drawing is the art of taking a line for a walk” and created from direct observations during the first nine months of my son Sebastian’s life when he was learning to crawl and then walk (2002).

The observation that no matter how often he kept falling he kept getting up and trying again to walk until he succeeded moved me deeply. The bold fragility of these drawings is a testament to the power of the life force.

Following Katrina, I was left with only salvaged drawings and sketch books from my flooded studio and began to piece my life and work together through the art of collage. Over the past twenty years I have created scores of collage portraits, reassembling disparate pieces of paper and artifacts into coherent images of my subjects. These tributes have helped me to make sense of the unimaginable. I include a collage portrait of Philip Seymour Hoffman, a testament to his artistic life and to the struggle that all artists face.

My meditations end with a series of recent works on paper and a ten minute video.

The images in the series Migration were inspired by safe harbours and cave dwellings…havens that were always there but sometimes just out of sight as I and my family experienced our own migration.

Finally, the ten minute collaborative video Fragile, a three-way collaboration featuring a haunting musical score by composer Christopher Marianetti, a striking video by Jonathan Vitagliano, and artwork reassembled from sketchbooks and photographs damaged in Hurricane Katrina by John K Lawson invites the viewer to meditate on art and artifact, and migrations through time and space.

— JK Lawson

Garden of Unearthly Delights, 1998 to 2025
beaded mural, Panel 7 of 7, Total measurement for 7 panels 45’ W x 2’H

ABOUT THE ARTIST:
John K Lawson is a visual artist and poet who has been exhibiting and publishing his work for over 40 years. Born in Birmingham, England, he was raised in the Suffolk countryside, moving to South London when he was a teenager. Inspired by the beauty of the English countryside, Lawson’s early work was landscape painting. In 1985 he arrived in America on a student exchange program at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge and entered a foreign world.

Affected by the Deep South culture, he soon became part of an underground art scene in New Orleans that included working in tattoo, t-shirt and mural designs long before these mediums became mainstream. During this time, he created several painted murals for buildings in Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Lawson also became known for his unique drawing style and creations using discarded Mardi Gras beads after the parades. He covered mannequins, pianos and drums with intricate beadwork, including a 45 foot long bar top at the notorious artists’ haven the Audubon Hotel on St. Charles Avenue. This mural is on disply at TSL for the first time since it was submerged in the Hurricane Katrina waters in 2005. His most recent beaded piece was a drum set for musician Travis Barker for an exclusive Superbowl party in New Orleans.

From the wreckage of his studio following Katrina Lawson continued his practice of using recycled materials, moving from the Mardi Gras beads to collages of water submerged drawings. Sustainability and the use of recycled materials informs his daily practice though in recent years he has returned to the painting practice of his youth and is currently working on large paintings.

His paintings, collages and beaded sculptural pieces have appeared both nationally and internationally in The American Visionary Art Museum, the Hebrew Union Museum, the New Orleans Contemporary Arts Center and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Jacksonville, FL. His public works can be found in buildings throughout the Central Business District of New Orleans. Lawson’s work is in major private collections in the US as well as in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum, The Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, The West Baton Rouge Museum of Art and on loan to Arts University Plymouth, UK. Lawson’s work has been critically acclaimed and awarded national grants and fellowships. He has twice received the MA Grant for Creative Individuals and has also been awarded the Berkshire Taconic Foundation Individual Artist Grant. He has received grants from the Pollack Krasner Foundation, the Gottlieb Foundation and the New Orleans Arts Council. He was a resident artist at the Sante Fe Art Institute and at Arts University Plymouth, UK. As an educator he has taught privately and in studios for over 20 years. As Artist in Residence of the Knock Knock Children’s Museum in LA he created and supervised the teaching spaces. Lawson was educated at Arts University Plymouth, UK and Louisiana State University. He currently resides in western Massachusetts and can be found on the first Thursday of each month co-hosting A Galere of Poetic Autopsies at Park Theater Hudson.
John Lawson: www.lawsonworks.com

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On view October 11 – November 9, 2025

MEDITATIONS ON THE HUDSON/ ART AND ARTIFACT by John K Lawson

MEDITATIONS ON THE HUDSON/ ART AND ARTIFACT
by John K Lawson