Jason Rafferty

Artist Statement

My series Nature Catalyst explores experimental narratives of the transition to energy sustainability through the media of painting, drawing, and collage. The title comes from the chemistry publication of the academic journal Nature. A catalyst, or a substance which is introduced into a chemical reaction to increase the rate of the process, is considered as an agent of material transformation, conveyed in abstract landscape spaces which evoke a fragmentary process of becoming. The work responds attentively to observed light and atmosphere of landscapes which I have inhabited, including the hills of North Georgia between Atlanta and Athens, which I drove around for three years while living there during my graduate studies; the skies and plains of Eastern and Central Oklahoma, with their ochre prairie grasses and towering wind turbines; and the Atlantic coast off of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, where I attended the Pouch Cove Foundation Artist Residency while creating a number of these works.