Profile

Jesse Townsley’s paintings and sculpture often combine the two genres. The materials used depend upon the ideas being conveyed in each particular piece— wood, paper, glass, and electrical wire have been prominent so far. Townsley likes to paint with acrylic as it has aspects of both ink and paint.

Townsley thinks of himself as an “art shaman”. In his work he is often exploring the question “How do the various levels of reality, which appear to be separate, connect?” How did we get here, where might we want to go?”

Townsley fuses realism, abstraction, graphic communication, science, and, occasionally, the written word in his art. His work is influenced by his decades of experience as a graphic designer, especially the 18 years he was at the Tibetan Buddhist publisher Snow Lion. In the late 80s and early 90s he studied with Tom Buechner and Martin Poole as a member of the realist Corning Painters Group. In 2011 Townsley received teachings in Wabi Sabi ceramic techniques from Eric Serritella who studied with Ah Leon and Taiwan clay masters. Townsley has received lessons in glassmaking from Tony Serviente, Aaron Jack, Denise Stillwaggon Leone, and staff members at the Corning Museum of Glass Studio.

Townsley’s art has been in juried shows in various cities in New York State and New Jersey since the 1980s. He received the Betts F. Komer Award at a regional competition at Arnot Art Museum in Elmira in 1989 and the Award for Excellence at a Conception Global Art Collective Show in New York City in 2016. A sculpture he designed was accepted into the international New Glass Review 33 competition in 2012. Townsley had his first solo show, at the Community Arts Partnership Artspace in Ithaca, which received an arts grant, in May 2015.

Townsley began a research project in the late 1970s he called “The Structure of the Universe” after drawing images seen under microscopes in a college botany class and this project has sparked his subsequent efforts in both art and science. The art and science sides of Townsley’s work influence each other and cannot be completely separated. His series of sculptures the Mind Buckets, for example, grew out of a paper he is writing on visual thinking as exhibited in Paleolithic art. One of the Mind Buckets illustrates a section of this paper. In 2015 Townsley attended the “Prehistoric Networks in the longue durée : Palaeolithic Innovations enabling the Neolithic Revolution” conference in Berlin. In 2016 he launched the website Lithic Age Art & Design Research with his first published scientific paper. In 2017 an article he wrote titled “BP: Time for a Change” was published in the peer-reviewed journal Radiocarbon. The Australian Rock Art Research Association (AURA) has accepted Townsley’s paper “Adding a Design Perspective” for publication.

Townsley hopes to help break down the artificial barriers between art and science and help both fields progress. With such efforts as Advocates for Water, which he founded and directs, he is also working toward helping avoid some potentially devastating scenarios we could be headed toward and achieving global renewal instead.