Jon Wos

I work in the Annex Art Gallery in the Art and Communication building on campus and we are currently showing my favorite living artist's work. His name is Jon Wos and he has 25 oil paintings on display in the Annex. He is my favorite artist because his oil paintings are so realistic and brilliantly painted. They hold so much emotion in them and even without an eye for art you'd be able to see what he is trying to tell his audience through each painting. Jon Wos is a very unique man who I had the pleasure on meeting last week. He is a alumni of the University of Oshkosh and is easy to pick out from a crowd. Jon is handicapped. He was born with a growth problem and must ride in a electric wheel chair for the rest of his life. In his paintings, Jon draws himself in the stages of his battles through his physical disabilities. He has a series of nearly 20 paintings of himself in the hospital after surgery on both of his legs. The series shows the emotion and mental struggle Jon went through in those longs days of being trapped in a hospital. The colors of the painting show the good and bad times of those days. My most favorite painting Jon has mad is one call "The Pity Party" which portrays 5 different sides of himself sitting at a round table. One is of him wearing a cast on his arm drinking a bottle of liquor, the next of him blowing smoke out of his mouth into the air, the middle Jon is looking at the audience with a vacant expression on his face, the next is staring with a bottle of liquor next to him, and the last is of him holding a shot. This picture is beautiful and complicated at the same time. I feel it is a painting people would study and learn about in a classroom. There is so much symbolism and feeling behind every part of Jon. The next painting that went along with this one is of himself "Leaving the Pity Party." This painting is of the five Jon's all doing something different. Two are still sitting at the table in their wheel chairs, one is on the floor motioning for them to join him, another is looking out a window while he sits on the floor, and the Jon is standing up looking our that window with a white light shining on him. Jon has so many meanings behind every single piece of art work he has made. I could go on for forever explaining and bragging about all his work but it wouldn't do him justice. You have to see it understand and appreciate its greatness.