Jacob Wiseheart

My large-scale paintings explore the different aspects of personal memory and collective memory through the theoretical filter of metacognition, or the awareness of one's own behavior, thoughts, dispositions, and memory. I investigate the metacognitive process with one particular question in mind: What would both consciousness and memory look like if represented through visual means?

In order to relate to my viewers on a visual level, my large-scale paintings also attempt to deconstruct the vernacular of typical Americana spaces such as gas stations, carnivals, and mobile home parks, emphasizing both their familiarity as well as uncanny strangeness. It is my belief that Americana spaces such as these mimic the transitory nature of memories. They are spaces we connect with generally and only experience them by passing through them as opposed to stationarily.

All concepts and themes aside, I am an artist who struggles with mental health and my art is a therapeutic way for me to wade through different emotions and memories. My process into metacognition allows me to understand how my memories, thoughts and behaviors help me construct my lived experience and reality. With this systematic journey of metacognition and personal experience and metacognition in mind, my large-scale paintings aim to create a two-dimensional space that is parallel to my own.

My hope is that my large-scale paintings provide viewers with a space to contemplate what it is they are seeing and thinking, in hopes that they will bring that same curiosity to their own lives and experiences.