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“The tension between the formal aplomb of these paintings and their anxious, edgy poetry accounts in part for their arresting power.”

– ROBERT BERLIND, ART IN AMERICA

“In Jon Gregg’s paintings there is a sense of absolute concentration, always on the edge of collapse. They consist of images in layers and layers of oil paint, in which the viewer can trace the weaving paths of contemplation and tension. These paintings come as offerings to Painting; this is an art that does not demonstrate, but when looked at, is revealed as unstoppable. The figures coil you into their essence, eternal and mortal.
A life long practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism, Gregg is able to unite the Buddhist idea of non attachment with our the existential anguish of our contemporary drift. In his paintings he converses with the past of a civilization distant enough for him to see it as if from behind a screen of time, but also in a way that inspires passion. After all the empty attitudes and sensibilities that contaminate our galleries today, as a fellow painter, I receive from the anger and delicacy of Gregg’s paintings, a strong desire to continue.”

– LUCIO POZZI, IL GIORNALE DELL’ARTE MILAN [Translated From the Italian ]

“Gregg’s magical, yet often troubled vistas, are alive with a welter of gouged and scratched scraffito- like lines, on a shallow picture plane, tensely balanced between surface plasticity and two dimensional space. Each work is individually engaging like a unique snapshot from a voluminous figurative cosmos into which Gregg has escorted his viewers.
Splashes of underlying gesso and color, smudges and fingerprints are all integral elements, perhaps left to emphasize the materiality of Gregg’s paintings. There is no illusion of total control here, like an astronomer peering into a solar system in formation, a viewer of these works can see that creation is a messy process. Order is not imposed but allowed to evolve.”

– MARC AWODEY, SEVEN DAYS

“Jon Gregg is a painter’s painter. His trust in the medium is absolute, manifested through patient discovery and revelation, elucidating soulfulness in his paintings……surprises within surprises, both subtle and illuminated – runes that are figures and objects embedded in landscapes that feel timeless yet immediate.”

– ARLENE DISTLER, ART NEW ENGLAND

“Gregg’s works command a simultaneous attention and release from the viewer; they seem meant to be taken in through the senses, and released into the wild landscape of the viewer’s life, he invites the viewer to see freely – to step into the stream of these works and see where they go. Gregg’s lush works evoke sound and silence, human suffering, love, loss, abundance, war, peace and politics, all seemingly without trying , as their ardent marks thrum with life.”

– AMY RAHN, ART NEW ENGLAND

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