Of the title of the show and the unifying theme, James is really interested in is the what the words “Now We Lustre” might insinuate; he feels it has a certain amount of poetry, relating to the way people are present and alive and able to do things, and how this happens for a finite amount of time. The paintings in the show are a physical embodiment of the fact that he is alive to make them and the viewer is alive to see them. They are scrapes on the wall of a cell, a way to record time. “Now We Lustre” refers to the fragile state of the present. Now is now.
As a group of work, the paintings work together with the loose overarching theme of appropriating mass images and channeling them through a hand made process; a human maker. The process includes starting with mechanically produced images and filtering them thru the eye, hand and brain of the painter. Chronister likes to think of the paintings responding to one another the way songs on an album might. Even if the paintings (songs) may appear dissimilar upon first strike, he strives for a unifying mood, approach and overall sensibility. The paintings work with one another to create a more complex meaning. A show of just landscapes or just rock stars would be very different. Hopefully the disparate subjects stir deeper questions about their connection. A forest is quite a bit different when next to a picture of Brian Jones (founding member of the Rolling Stones).
