Jill Joy - Artist's Statement

I seek to evoke the oneness that unites us all. ~ Jill Joy

My work traces the evolution of human awareness from raw feeling to expanded consciousness—as a progressive, lived, embodied experience of light. Working primarily in oil, I use color, luminous fields and sometimes poetry to engage the body and the brain of the viewer, inviting somatic calm, focused attention, and moments of transcendence.

Spiritual enlightenment has been a stated goal of mine since my early 20’s when I was profoundly impacted by a 2.5-year residency in a yoga ashram. Immersed in yogic ideas of oneness, energy/prana, celibacy, a vegetarian diet and devotional lifestyle. Idea of the ascension of light or energy through the energetic centers of the body (chakras) represented by the colors of the visible light spectrum (ROYGBIV) profoundly impacts my work.

My current exploration, The Enlightenment Project, integrates oil painting, activist digital art (The Enlightenment Campaign), and sculpture into a tripartite investigation of light and enlightened ideas—conceptualized as energetic color, radical equitable thought and examined both somatically (chakras) and spectrally (ROYGBIV).

I’m interested in how visual stimuli modulate perception, moving us from fragmentation toward coherence, from turbulence toward stillness, from ego to universal consciousness. I’m interested in light both formally and as spiritual metaphor. I investigate how light and color can heal trauma and impact neurochemistry and alter brain plasticity.

Although primarily an oil painter, The Enlightenment Project has expanded to sculpture and digital art as well. In recent years, my exploration of light has extended to enlightened ideas and adding momentum towards the creation of an enlightened society.

Each piece is created to be experienced rather than merely observed. I compose with restraint and intention: minimalist fields of color that pulse subtly and ask the eye to slow down, and spatial rhythms that suggest continuity beyond the edge of the canvas, towards the infinite. My aim is resonance rather than representation: to create conditions that help us remember our inherent unity and offer a quiet, visual pathway to it.

My exploration is influenced by Turner, Rothko, Jenny Holtzer, Barbara Kruger, Jung, Joseph Campbell, Gloria Steinem, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Yogic teachings. As I evolved through Illumination to Enlightenment, I find my roots more tied to the Light & Space movement, treating perception itself as, if not the artwork itself, at least an equal partner in the experience of the viewer. My Enlightenment series similarly uses luminous fields and reflective surfaces to shift awareness, inviting viewers into altered states.

The overarching idea that serves as the foundation for all my work is The Evolution of Consciousness. This has taken expression across multiple evolving series/explorations including Emotion, Consciousness, Transformation, Illumination and most recently The Enlightenment Project. This progression articulates the arc of inner change—of personal evolution, expanding outward to produce societal change via artist activism.

•        Emotion expresses trauma, emotional intensity and rupture;

•        Consciousness identifies the awareness of the self within an infinite plane of love;

•        Transformation renders the quantum leap or threshold between states;

•        Illumination gathers clarity into the dawning of a light filled state of lived awareness.

•        Enlightenment Creating the experience of light and a higher state of enlightened ideals.

My canvases create radiant environments that envelop the viewer rather than sit apart as static objects. The Enlightenment Campaign (activist digital art) is designed to be printed on aluminum panels to create a radiant experience of both color and ideas. Many Light & Space works echo phenomenology and transcendence. My work explicitly channels spiritual illumination—art as a portal to expanded consciousness.

In a world that accelerates and fragments, my work proposes a counter-velocity—toward coherence, clarity, and the felt presence of light.