ARTIST INFO
Biography |
Jon Mulhern is an American painter, sculptor, and educator whose work creates abstract environments inspired by nature, memory, instinct, and the language of mapmaking. Through an intuitive and physically driven studio practice, he explores atmosphere, movement, and the emotional resonance of place. Rather than depicting the natural world literally, Mulhern distills its essence, transforming lived experience into immersive painted environments that invite contemplation and personal interpretation.
Raised in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C., Mulhern developed an early appreciation for art through regular visits to the Smithsonian museums, where he was drawn to the work of J.M.W. Turner, Vincent van Gogh, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, and the enduring traditions of the Old Masters. Equally influential was the visual intensity of Washington's street culture, establishing a dialogue between historical tradition and contemporary visual culture that continues to shape his work.
Mulhern received both his BFA and MFA/MAT in Painting and Education from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). Following graduate school, he worked professionally as a painter, sculptor, and professor in Baltimore before relocating to New York in 2008. After establishing a studio in Brooklyn, he later moved to Long Island and, in 2022, settled in Sag Harbor, New York, where he lives and works.
An avid world traveler with a deep appreciation for global artistic traditions, Mulhern draws inspiration from the cultures, landscapes, and visual languages he encounters. His practice is informed by nature, cartography, Romanticism, postwar abstraction, Japanese ink painting, and a broad range of historical and contemporary artistic practices. Developed through an instinctive process he describes as "gut painting," his work embraces uncertainty, physical engagement, and the expressive qualities of paint itself. Through layered surfaces, expressive mark-making, calligraphic gestures, and tactile material processes, he constructs abstract environments that balance beauty with vulnerability, creating spaces where memory, atmosphere, and emotion converge.
Mulhern's work has been exhibited throughout the United States, including at the United Nations, and has been featured in exhibitions alongside Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, and Elaine de Kooning, where he was among the youngest artists represented.
Alongside his studio practice, Mulhern is the Founding Director of the Ross School Art Academy and Chair of Visual Arts at Ross School. He has collaborated with leading institutions including the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Pratt Institute, the School of Visual Arts (SVA), and the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), mentoring emerging artists and contributing to advanced studio education.
Grounded in the belief that painting is an experience rather than simply an image, Mulhern's practice invites viewers to slow down, engage deeply, and discover their own emotional connection to the work.
Artist Statement |
My practice draws from nature, memory, instinct, and the emotional language of place. Rather than recording an environment literally, I seek to capture its essence: the atmosphere of a moment, the traces of memory, and the emotional resonance that remains. Painting has never been simply a career for me; it is a calling, a lifelong pursuit driven by a deep need to create. It is the one thing I feel compelled to return to, a visual language through which I explore experience, emotion, and the world around me.
Painting is a continual dialogue between intuition and uncertainty. In the studio, I move through doubt, hope, frustration, and childlike wonder, following instinct and allowing the work to reveal itself through the process. Although I received my formal training in fine art at the Maryland Institute College of Art, I consider the most transformative period of my development to have happened outside the classroom, in the solitude of my studio. Away from instruction, expectation, and external influence, I began to discover the deeper rhythms of my own process and the instinctive approach I now describe as “gut painting.”
The studio is where I find focus, clarity, and connection. Every painting begins with a ritual: music is the first thing I turn on when I enter the studio and the last thing I turn off before I leave. Everything that happens in between is devoted to the work. I do not begin with a predetermined composition or a fixed outcome. Instead, I approach the canvas as a living process, allowing each mark, layer, and gesture to guide the next decision. What may begin as a fleeting memory, a glimpse of light, or an impression from the natural world gradually develops into something deeper. The painting becomes a conversation between myself, the material, and the unknown possibilities within the work.
I create abstract environments and skyscapes that explore movement, atmosphere, and the sublime power of nature. Through expressive mark-making, layered surfaces, intimate passages, and calligraphic gestures, I construct paintings that invite contemplation and personal interpretation. White and red often emerge as active forces within the work, creating light, depth, movement, and tension across the surface.
The environments I create balance beauty with vulnerability, reflecting a world capable of immense wonder and undeniable fragility. Inspired by the timeless techniques of the Old Masters, the emotional power of Romanticism, and the evolving language of contemporary painting, my practice exists within a dialogue between history, nature, and abstraction. Influenced by observation, world travel, mapmaking, and the visual languages of cultures across time, as well as the complexities of contemporary life, my work transforms experience into images of nature, memory, and emotion.
Ultimately, I hope my work offers an experience rather than simply an image, one that invites viewers to slow down, connect, and discover their own relationship to the atmosphere, memory, and emotion contained within each environment.
Quotes |
“Painting has never been simply a career for me; it is a calling. It is the place where I process experience, memory, and emotion, transforming what I feel into something visual.”
“I begin with the canvas and allow the work to reveal itself. Through instinct, uncertainty, and discovery, each mark becomes part of a conversation between myself, the material, and the unknown.”
“I am not interested in recording a place literally. I seek to capture what remains: the atmosphere, the memory, and the emotional energy of an experience.”
“The studio is where I find clarity and connection. I do not create images of places; I create environments where memory, emotion, and imagination can exist together.”
- Jon Mulhern