Forgiveness

Jill Joy - Forgiveness - oil on canvas - 72x60" Available

“Forgiveness” evokes the explosive birth of a new universe — a burst of light and energy that transforms destruction into creation. The radiating strokes suggest both the shattering force of a star’s collapse and the luminous expansion that follows, a reminder that endings are also beginnings.

At its root, forgiveness is this same alchemy: the release of what has wounded us into a field of growth and renewal. It is not about erasing the past or excusing harm, but about loosening the grip of ego — recognizing that another’s flaws and shortcomings arise from their own struggles, not as a reflection of our worth. In this balance — allowing imperfection without tolerating abuse — the wound becomes a source of light.

This painting embodies that moment of transformation, when pain dissolves into spaciousness and a new cycle of becoming begins.

https://www.jilljoy.com/paintings#/consciousness/

#art #abstractart #spirituality #oilpainting #contemporaryart #artconsultant #artist #sandiego

Enlightenment

“Enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It's seeing through the facade of pretense. It's the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true.”

— Adyashanti

Jill Joy - Epic- oil on canvas - 48x72

Compassion in this World

We need compassion now more than ever. For those who are suffering and being further marginalized by our new government and for ourselves as we see our values dismantled and our hopes for a more equitable, kinder society fade from view.

Compassion is a transcendent quality that goes beyond the limitations of our individual egos and connects us with the wider world. It involves feeling empathy for the suffering of others and a desire to alleviate that suffering. It's a quality that inspires us to act selflessly, to put the needs of others before our own, and to reach out to those who are struggling, even if they are strangers.

Jill Joy w Compassion - oil on canvas - 48x60”

Compassion has the power to heal the divisions and conflicts that so often tear us apart. When we are compassionate, we see the humanity in others, regardless of their race, religion, or culture. We recognize that we are all part of the same human family, and we are all in this together. It creates a mystical connection - which is what this painting seeks and strives to communicate. They mystical connection between ourselves, nature, each other and the divine.

Compassion has the ability to break down the barriers of fear and mistrust that keep us apart and create a sense of connection and belonging that is essential to our well-being.

Compassion is important because it helps us to cultivate positive qualities like patience, kindness, and forgiveness. It can inspire us to be more mindful and present in our interactions with others, which in turn can deepen our relationships and make us more resilient in the face of adversity.

In a world that can often feel disconnected and divided, compassion is more important than ever.

#art #spirituality #abstractpainting #contemporaryart

The Age of Enlightenment

My new series of paintings - Enlightenment

A contemplative journey, each work a meditation on the profound connection between light, the human spirit and spiritual enlightenment. This series is an exploration of the visible light spectrum, each hue corresponding to one of the seven chakras, energy centers within our body that govern our psychological and spiritual well-being.

In these minimalist oil paintings, I employ a restrained palette to evoke the essence and simplicity of enlightenment. The colors transition smoothly from one to the next, just as light flows across the spectrum, and our energy flows through the chakras.
My brushstrokes are deliberate yet minimal, allowing the canvas to breathe and the viewer’s eye to fill in the empty space.

Jill Joy - Sat Nam - oil on canvas - 40x80” - 2024

Simplicity invites introspection, urging the observer to consider the interplay of light and hashtag#color, and how it resonates within their own being.

Enlightenment is not just a collection of paintings; it is an invitation to a visual and spiritual awakening, encouraging us to reflect on the light within ourselves and the world around us.

Through this series, I aspire to illuminate the path to inner peace, harmony with the universe and individual spiritual enlightenment, ending the cycle of birth and death.

#sandiego #artist #art #oilpainting #abstractpainting

Enlightened Portraits - Benjamin Netanyahu

Send this man a prayer for peace. If we could get peace on his mind maybe Israel could find a reasonable resolution to the war in Gaza that has now killed thousands of children. I don’t condone terrorism - but when killing begets exponential killing where does it end? How much has the legacy of British colonialism impacted what we experience today in this region - the unresolved festering conflicts from a people displaced from their land and 70 years of occupation by Israel of Gaza. When people are oppressed they resort to drastic measures. The killing has to stop somewhere. I fear Netenyahu is becoming what Israel was created to remedy.

#prayforisrael #prayforgaza #bringthemback #freepalestine #israelicrimes #gazaunderattack #stopkillingchildren

#love #equality #justice #color #consciousness  #inclusion  #rainbow #light  #chakras   #enlightenment #artistsoninstagram #feminism #art #poster #posterart #spirituality #equity #yoga #artist #peace #artistactivist #activism #enlightenment #useyourvoice #speakup #vote #activist #hope #digitalprints #endfascism #democracy

The Power of #Emotion

I’ve been thinking today about the power of emotion and how important emotional connection is both with ourselves and each other. If we cut ourselves off  from our emotions we are dead. Dead to feeling what we feel, dead to sensing the feelings of others. Empathy dies and the world becomes a more violent place. 

 This line of thought led me back to one of the essential functions of artists: reconnecting the world to emotion. We are the conduits for getting people back to themselves, to experiencing their feelings which allows them to treat themselves with sensitivity and thus treat others with sensitivity. This makes the world a better, richer, more compassionate, more beautiful place.

When we sensitize ourselves in this world we risk being overwhelmed. How can you buy clothes that were manufactured by small children in Bangladesh on starvation wages? If you think about it when you buy, it it’s incredibly difficult. Trying to source an entire life in a non-violent manner is nearly impossible.

I’ve been trying unsuccessfully to be a vegetarian. Because my body does not do well on a largely carb-based diet, it doesn't work for me. So giving up, this morning at a neighborhood restaurant I ordered something I would normally - an omelet. On my plate in addition to eggs were ham, cheese and a side of potatoes. As I sat there looking at the plate I thought about the poor pigs who are as intelligent as my dog and what kind of life they might’ve had and then I thought about the migrant workers who might have dug the potatoes out of the ground and I wondered about the kind of life they had. I could go on thinking about the cows tied to milking machines all day. Then I found myself almost in tears over breakfast. I realized, in a truly compassionate, higher vibration world, my breakfast would not be a plate of violence. 

Ruth Bader Ginsburg reminds us that even though we are in a backslide politically, things are better than they used to be when it was legislated that women could be paid less than men and African-Americans could be legally discriminated against. These things still happen, but at least the laws have changed. So even though we still don’t live in an emotional, compassionate world, there is progress.

That’s where we as artists come in. To speed the progress. To allow people to connect with their emotions so that they become empathetic and treat animals, children and the more vulnerable populations with dignity and care. Because when we treat ourselves with dignity and care we are able to extend that out to others. So while I can’t be a full-on vegetarian or vegan at this point, I have stopped eating cows which makes me feel slightly better.

So in a time where we have a more brutal administration than I ever imagined in my lifetime and compassion and human dignity are short on the ground, our role as artists is more important than ever. 

Personally, I am beginning to understand the power and necessity of having emotional connections in all of my relationships: business, friends, family, lovers, neighbors, even strangers. There is the opportunity to make a connection. Without it the relationships are dry, hollow, self-interested and ultimately destructive.

#spiritual wings

Sometimes disappointment and betrayal give you #spiritual wings.

I Can Live Without You, 72 x 48”, oil on canvas

#Emotion is part of a series trifecta which includes two other bodies of work, Consciousness and Illumination. For the last 10 years I have worked on these three series concurrently as the inspiration and spiritual or emotional need arises.

Metaphorically these three bodies of work represent the evolution of the soul through the three aspects of existence: the body (Emotion), the mind (Consciousness) and spirit (Illumination). As human beings we work with and evolve these three aspects our ourselves to achieve our full potential as divine beings and to attain peace in the here and now.

#spiritualawakening #contemporarypainting

#create #creativity #art #abstractart #flashesofdelight #peoplescreatives  #contemporaryart #artgallery #luxurylifestyle #architecture #spirituality #contemporaryartist #interiordesign #interiordesigner

#artconsultant #losangeles #architect

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#artist  #artcollection #artinstallation #paintingoftheday

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Organic Integration: Aline Mare & Michael Giancristiano

TONIGHT THE JILL JOY GALLERY IS PLEASED TO PRESENT ORGANIC INTEGRATION: ALINE MARE AND MICHAEL GIANCRISTIANO- 6-9Pm

CONTEMPORARY ART EXHIBITION IN LOS ANGELES. ON VIEW THROUGH DEC 3

curator’s statement

Aline Mare and Michael Giancristiano both deal in the currency of nature and through the application of their shared awareness of an inter-connected reality, their work transcends the very world that inspires it.

Included in this exhibition are works from Michael’s series, “Arctic Metamorphosis”. Their vast, white empty spaces recall an icy desolation and are punctuated with wound-like divots and abrasions. As the light plays across these three dimensional objects throughout the day, one gets the sense of a changing landscape. Despite this seeming inhospitable ground the surfaces sprout new growth in the form of plants that need little in the way of nourishment to thrive.

Beaten and scarred industrial plywood is rendered natural and elemental once more from his very human effort to shape reality. Michael states that he is addressing the evolution of the natural world, the new growth that happens even as the destruction of global warming takes place. “The ice is melting at an alarming rate and we have reached the tipping point from which there is no return. I don’t feel that there is anything we can do to stop the cycle of change that has been set into motion and I don’t view this as the end of the world but as a metamorphosis. These regions are waiting to evolve.” MG

While Michael speaks to the destruction/evolution of the natural world, there is in the experience of viewing his work, a metaphor of spiritual and emotional rebirth. His sculptural reliefs convey an inherent message of re-formation and new growth; as such they become a metaphor for the inner and outer life. As Michael bangs and shapes these prefab industrial materials in his effort to express something evolutionary out of the tragedy of global warming, the process recalls what we as individuals have the choice to do when we undergo loss and change: to remake ourselves into something new and perhaps better, closer to the truth of ourselves.

Aline Mare’s work incorporates the minutiae of existence - seed pods, stems, and leaves (all captured in extreme detail) on a backdrop of the expanse of the atmosphere - weather images from NASA and hand painted backgrounds. In rendering this level of divine precision against transcendent, color and texture filled backdrops she gives us a vision of an infinite and complex beauty against which the details of the natural world play out.

Aline’s work is informed by a technical journey that in the end provides a luminous visceral and emotional experience. “Using the illumination of the scanning machine as an original light source, I use digital scanning as a contemporary interpretation of the 19th-century photographic process of cliché verre, literally a Greek phrase meaning, “glass picture”. The distinct layering of image and sensory background amplifies the direct beauty of the natural object as it interfaces with technology in a kind of modern hybridization of an historic photographic process with hand drawn painting.” – AM

Aline embarked on the creation of some the works included in this show in an effort to find grounding and connectedness in her new city, Los Angeles. While her work speaks to community and rootedness with its reference to the abundant plant life of a costal desert, when viewing Aline’s work, I am overcome by the sense of the beauty and mystery of life and a universe that is governed by a detailed, logical and yet random process. This sense is furthered by her most recent inclusion of crystals in her “Cryst-aline Series” (2016) which she states “examines crystal growth as a metaphor for transformation.” AM

Aline’s work highlights organic elements in a nascent universe almost as though we are contemporaneously experiencing the big bang and the finished resultant life that was created right down to the very last detail and in so doing it defies time. The depth of blue in “Cloud Seeds” makes one think of a wormhole, or a blank space in the time-space continuum full of infinite possibility; as though creation is spinning out of this place of the unknown.

–- Jill Joy, Curator & Gallery Director, Jill Joy Gallery

Born in Los Angeles California, Michael Giancristiano is an accomplished artist with over 25 years of exhibition history. He is best known for his sculpted and deconstructed wall reliefs that explore nature through the medium of plywood. He has exhibited internationally as well as nationally, has won numerous awards and can be found in many private and corporate collections. In addition, he has served on the Advisory Board of the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art. Currently Michael sits on the Board of Directors of the Inglewood based, "Van Hook Foundation".

Aline Mare began her career in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, coming out of a background of theatre, performance and installation art. She was an early member of Collaborative Projects, a collective formed in downtown New York City and performed in a multi-media partnership, Erotic Psyche, a film and music extravaganza exploring the body and the senses, which toured extensively in Manhattan and Europe throughout the 80s. She received an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1990 and has received several grants and residencies. New mixed–media works have been exhibited at Turtle Bay Museum, Santa Monica Museum, Headlands Center for the Arts, Printed Matter and James Fuentes Gallery in New York and an upcoming solo show at MOAH in 2017.