For a few years I took my atmospheres to a largely non-objective form inspired by Joan Mitchell, Helen Frankenthaler and Mark Rothko. If you go to my website now you’ll find one remaining work. I think I lost interest because of Instagram. I worked so hard to infuse my spaces with meaning—like those icons of the 50s—but now because of this here platform you can scroll through and find one example after another of meaningless blobs of color and form called abstract painting th

I can't remember a painting in the past 10 years that hasn't had a poem or writing attached to it, either in the making or the titling. These words have not been included in my website presentation of my works for a purely aesthetic reason, to keep the space clean and uncluttered and for the focus to be on the painting itself. I do understand that many people are interested in the inspiration for works and so I'll try to periodically share the words along with the work here

“… if a painter has source and belief in that source, then form will come. I want to be clear here in that form in itself will never give source.” What is your source? “The closest I can come is . . . the promise and longing that I feel in nature. I don’t know what that longing and promise is, but I know when it is and is not in the painting.” —Berthot, in conversation http://www.vqronline.org/vqr-gallery/turnings-and-returnings-art-jake-berthot This article on Jake Berthot'