Mutual Perceptions
a show of paintings at Spiral House
with Pam Easterday, Lucy Jermyn, & Derek Zwyer
December 14 & 15, 2024
Introduction
Mutual Perceptions!
Our reality is an amalgamation of perceptions, and with each of our eyes we see a different angle of the show. Spiral House invites you to perceive with your eyes the works of three Burlington-based artists: Pamela Easterday, Lucy Jermyn, and Derek Zwyer. Their paintings vary in style and inspiration, from the purely abstract to the figurative and symbolic. They were not created with the intention of being displayed with one another. Their existence together in this space is temporary and coincidental.
And yet, they feel connected. They share a context together. There is in Derek’s Agape the same cosmic awe and apocalypticism as in Lucy’s drawings. The blood and tears of the sun in Lucy’s In Heat echo the portals and eyes in Pamela’s work. Are her hooded figures lurking in the background of Derek’s abstractions, and did they guide his hand as well?
Beyond visual similarities, the artists share similar ideas in the necessity of art to build community. It is the belief of many Spiral House members and patrons that the true beauty of art comes from the connections and deeper understanding it helps to facilitate – to see into the personal language of our friends and neighbors. In Mutual Perceptions, we hope the artwork will facilitate this consciousness, by sharing our perceptions and experiences, we may better understand ourselves and the community we exist in.
We’re all in this together!
– Basil, friend & very helpful person to this show
Artist statements
Lucy Jermyn
In addition to three paintings from 2018-2023, in this show Lucy is including recent colored pencil drawings from 2024 that were done pondering theories around mass extinction events, such as the meteor shower that may have taken out the dinosaurs. There must have been so much beauty in the moments before they hit earth. Did the animals look up and wonder at the fiery streaks in the sky? Were they scared? Amazed?
Pamela Easterday
Pamela is a visual and performance artist. She began painting in 2012 beginning with oil and moving to acrylic. She describes her paintings as telepathic nightingales of existential wonderings. Claiming religious and mystical experiences as the foundation of her expressions, she feels she’s not alone when she paints and believes feelings may be great muses moving all around us trying to get our attention. She speaks and writes about the experiences and the plea for us all to end war, find new leaders, grow compassion, and do what you can before we die with this wondrous energy we call life. A deep listener to what is and what can we know now. There’s always more, says the soothsayer to the gathered. Further and further still til there ain’t no more.
@usernameforpam & https://thedirtymuse.com
Derek Zwyer
Derek thinks a lot about his reasons for spending 20-30 hours painting a week for the last year and a half, because it seems kind of ridiculous from a certain perspective. The best sense he’s had so far for why he does this is that painting allows him a sense of control of how exactly he’s using his energy and attention. All these tiny dabs represent the concept of performing work, specifically work that he can see himself in. It’s also nice how no one else ever really makes the same images. But an activity that is so directed towards unique production runs a risk of increasing alienation, and so what’s more important than making unique images is the ability to share them with people, make connection inspired by art, and convert the abstract representations back into material happenings.
@huffingoils & this website
Back to CV page
Derek Zwyer 