....If meaning is what you are looking for, feel free to play because John Stark has created a space for you to do so. His paintings are psychological playgrounds where if you attempt to find meaning you might go mad. However, don’t think that you are going to get anywhere or that you are going to find any truth because it doesn’t lie in the painting but in a symbiotic relationship between the artist and the beholder. As Cicero used to say: ‘when I look at my friends, I see myself’. John’s paintings create a ‘mirror’ which is his self portrait but where you can also see your own image. The act of viewing becomes a humanistic act of friendship in a world in which the only truth lies in that relationship. Friendship is a place where beauty and truth coalesce. The rest is just market.
