Jeremiah Stansbury expresses his art chiefly through oil painting. He received a BA in Art History from the University of Memphis in 2003 and has studied painting at the School of Visual Arts in New York City and drawing and design at Memphis College of Art. In 2003 he spent two months in Florence, Italy, conducting a close study of sculpture relating to the human anatomy to further develop his ideas concerning abstract painting.

I am an artist that is primarily concerned with what I call the "autobiographical" image, defined as the ability to tap into those images and symbols that make up one's own understanding of the visual world and thus integrating them into the self expressive force that is art. I am interested in the process that leads an artist from the logical creation of an abstract subject to the subjects he will use in future paintings. For me, art is made up of the thoughtful exploration of the visual symbols that make up the outer and inner worlds. It is the relationship between inner and outer visual symbols that drives the artist.

My artwork is made to be a reflection of those spinning, swirling images that make up the thought process which underlies our actions. My artwork is informed by dreams and shifting distant memory. My artwork is not a mirror of an arrival at a given vantage point, rather my art is inspired by my own unconscious changes in mood and state of mind. Each of our choices is based on some prior knowledge of a similar situation, in which our conscious powers of choice are used to add to and make our lot in life more livable and acceptable according to our wishes and desires. I do not believe that a person that is confronted by a situation of which he or she has no prior knowledge should be in for a bout of fear or regret. The situation in which we are called to act with no tangled past reference in which to frame our circumstances is what all conscious choice is tacitly hoping to discover. It is curiosity which makes variety the spice of life. As each of our conscious choices seeks to improve our situation in the world, (spiritually or physically) we can subtly sense that ridding ourselves of the burden of choice itself would be a huge improvement concerning the serenity of our mindstate. Our whole urgency to choose can become inept when we have followed the course of choices to improve our lot (and thus the world) until we have become insulated and a fundamental schism in which what we deem socially acceptable and what is actually considered acceptable by others begins to appear. In other words, you have worked, you have gotten your education, you have made the right choices to arrive at your own safe place in the world, however at the moment of your arrival, you notice that those who have not made the proper choices seem to set you on edge. Is it because they are simply lost souls? Why should that bother you, you who have taken care to do everything right. What bothers us is that down through history the existence of the "other" has always appeared as a creeping reminder of a person's inability to ultimately improve his life through proper choices.

Our unconscious desires and dreams are the spiritual stuff which inform and motivate our choices in the world. When we have either seen the futility of choice or have made it to a point in life where conscious and so called "rational" choices have become useless concerning our own betterment, we realize that it is not our will to better our lot that is the problem. Self-preservation is natural in all physical beings; it is the belief that if we only make the proper choices then as we see the light at the end of the tunnel our lives will consequently fall into place. In other words we believe that our choices somehow have the power to make our ideals into reality. I ask you though, should not any ideal situation to be truly ideal take into account our own inactivity or our willingness not to "choose" as even a small part of that ideal fantasy? Do we honestly believe that once we have made the proper choices that a series of events will follow like a chain reaction made of only circumstances that we find agreeable? And if we find something disagreeable, should we then just exercise our powers of denial and turn away?

What I am saying is that those unconscious prompting and dreams which lead us in a particular direction are there to be translated through art and are not a means to bring about an "ideal" set of circumstances. If dreams are used to lead us to a place of individual security, in the world, and at once "apart from" the world, at the height of our success, dreams and unconscious promptings will only take on the negative quality of the nightmare, the "other" will pop up all over the place. Dreams and the symbols of the unconscious offer no safe haven from the material problems we all face.

• Painted Planet Art Space, 2004, Memphis, Tennessee.
• "Oil Paintings by Jeremiah Stansbury", D'Edge Art and Unique Treasures, February 2003, Memphis, Tennessee.
• "A Fresh New Look", Painted Planet Art Space, August 2003, Memphis, Tennessee.
• Art Show at St. Georges Elementary School, March 2002, Memphis, Tennessee.
• "New Works on View", Midtown Artists Market, August 2002, Memphis, Tennessee.