Square Stripes, by Jesse Hickman

Jesse Hickman is an American artist born in Chicago, now living in northern Michigan. Trained in photography at the Institute of Design in Chicago in the late 1970s, he developed a largely self-taught practice, nurtured by a particular attention to humble materials and essential gestures. Influenced by *art brut*, he creates paintings on found objects such as sunflower seed bags, burlap, and worn paper. These supports become the ground for an exploration of line, rhythm, and form. Charcoal, tar, paint, and carbon paper enrich his stripped-down compositions with their materiality, where each element seems reduced to its truest expression. Through a practice based on restraint and economy of means, Jesse Hickman reveals the poetic potential of everyday materials and transforms the familiar into sensitive abstractions.