John Hall art exhibit opens at Impact Coffee Bar

Local artist John Hall rode into Decorah for our interview on his mid-size Honda Shadow motorcycle. On his drive into town, he was graced with sunshine and a sharp, cool breeze.

We met at the new location of Impact Coffee Bar, where an exhibition of John's oil paintings hangs prominently on the west wall. The exhibition is entitled "Got No Memory of Anything At All" and represents a year of John's work.

John is soft-spoken and introspective and can quote poetry in conversation with tact and ease. But his Texas roots and adulthood spent in the Midwest have provided John with a refreshing dose of self-deprecation and modesty when it comes to talking about his serious artwork. He's quick to describe his work as "weird" and "confusing." But below this self-mockery is an earnest artistic voice. When I look at John's paintings, it's clear he has a point of view.

The paintings in this current exhibition are abstract—formless, with heavy smudging—and they're about some pretty big ideas: memory, the wounds of history, the loss of identity. But the paintings, John is quick to note, also have to be beautiful: "My first interest is making something that has beauty, it's nice to look at; you look at it and it breeds curiosity. Below that, is the subtext, the message. I always try to challenge people to look deeper into the work, because that's where the fun is!"

I confessed to being confused by his paintings; I feel emotions, but they're without a story so my mind is more confused than certain. "And that's perfectly alright," John says, "because there isn't a correct way to look at a painting, at least none of my paintings."

He pauses, twists in his seat, and looks over his right shoulder to where his nine paintings hang. He considers his words and continues frankly: "What I do is provoke questions, a conundrum. In my work, I try to make something emotionally true, and sometimes that resonates with viewers and sometimes it doesn't."

John wants the viewer to create their own meaning; however, each painting, for John, begins with an idea, and over time—sometimes four to five weeks—he'll continue to layer, smudge, and scrawl oil and graphite over a previously white canvas, all the while trying to preserve the initial idea. Sometimes it works, John admits, other times, not so much.

Preserving an idea from mind to canvas takes enormous discipline and resolve. John doesn't believe in writers block or inspirational muses. "The muse is the easel," he says. "If you don't go to the easel, you won't meet the muse."

It's important for John to work every day, so he keeps a momentum, so that the dialogue he's having with his painting remains uninterrupted. "What the artist is really doing is simply creating a dialogue; the work is speaking to me, and I have to listen."

But part of listening is knowing when to turn away. John cautions it's important to leave the work with a little unsaid. "You need a place to start the next day. Before you leave your work for the day, you have to know what you want to say tomorrow. It gives you a sense of anticipation."