Jim Holyoak

Artist Website
Artist: Jim Holyoak
Title: Slaughtered Cow
Medium: Ink body prints and ink on paper
Size: 216" X 96"
Date: 2004
About the Artist: Jim Holyoak was born in Michigan, grew up in British Columbia, and has been based in Montréal for the last five years. He received a BFA with honors from the University of Victoria in 2004, and in 2007 he studied as an apprentice of ink painter, Shen Ling Xiang, in Yangshuo, China. Holyoak then went on to complete his MFA at Concordia University in 2011. His work has been published in three books and innumerable zines, and has exhibited in Vancouver, Los Angeles, New York, Montréal, Berlin, Trondheim, and at the Mustarinda House in the forests of central Finland.

Artist Statement: "'Fantasy abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters. Fantasy united with reason is the mother of the arts, and a source of wonders.' -Francisco Goya

My discipline is composed of drawing-installations and book-works, exploring the bridges and boundaries between perception and fantasy, humans and other animals, deep time and the present. What we think about, remember and imagine has a powerful effect on how we perceive and experience, on what we believe and how we behave. This is what prevents me from dismissing the imaginary as completely unreal.

During the last 15 years, I have amassed an enormous collection of paper – ranging in scale from postcards to murals – drawn, written, wrinkled and saturated with ink. Some are individual pieces unto themselves, some are pages for hand-bound books and zines, and some are garbage and debris. This material is reused within dense installation-environments, tailored to the architecture of the rooms that it occupies. Almost all my work is in greyscale. I’ve found that within the limits of ink, graphite, paper, light, and my own body, an inexhaustible variety of thinking and expression is possible. This is especially so given that my discipline is comprised of drawing and creative writing.

Though the content of my artwork ranges from the biological to the phantasmagorical, there is a persistent interest in human empathy for other species, and in the difficulty of fathoming deep time – the world millions of years ago, and the world ahead. The animals I contemplate most are the species that never existed, that no longer exist, and those that are on the brink of extinction. For example, I love dinosaurs because they are completely real and completely imaginary – they are monsters for real. This tension between what is real and imaginary, what once existed and no longer exists, is the uniting principle in all my work.

Questions I ask myself lately include: Could the mere wish to empathize with the non-human, or the attempt to imagine being something other than human, lead to knowledge outside our human experience? Is it possible for an artist such as myself to deal directly with ‘nature,’ or only with the attempts to characterize it? How does language and imagery shape our perceptions of our settings, other species and each other? How and when do stories and images meaningfully point beyond themselves to the real world?

While gravely concerned by the realities of species loss, climate change, and violence against animals and environments, I continue to defend playfulness, the suspension of disbelief and the power of raw imagination. I hope my work will be a catalyst for discomfort with anthropocentric views of human supremacy. Just as fairytales have often served a cautionary function, my drawings of monsters and haunted places are situated in the inevitably lonesome futurity that awaits our species if we carry on with fundamentalism, war and ecocide. Through drawing, installations and books, I am striving for a holistic reconnection between my artistic, social and environmental concerns." - Jim Holyoak, 2014

About the Work, etc.:  "This drawing is from a series of human / non-human hybrids, that include skin-prints from my body. I have drawn these out of concern for other animals, and the plight of their habitats. I have also drawn them out of a wish to metamorphose – a desire to know what it would be like to have a body other than my own. I will never know what it is like to belong to another species, but these drawing are an attempt to bridge that psychological void. Knowing that I cannot know, I yet suspect that there is value in the attempt, and the questions that arise. What do we have in common with other species? How are we different? What is the value of our real and supposed differences? Do we seem to relate, or do we feel alienated? How are humans distinct from the rest of nature? Is this separation an illusion? Are there ways to break the spell? These hybrids are omens of the monstrous. If monsters are animals that do not exist, then actual, living creatures are monsters for real." - Jim Holyoak

This work by Jim shows viewers a glimpse of animal cruelty in the same way that many in this gallery do; by presenting images of the slaughtering of animals. His work can be a bit gruesome, though it is toned down by the use of black and grey ink, rather than color, but it grabs viewers' attention and screams out what Holyoak feels is a problem in our modern society. Even though the series is about much more to him, you can still see the deep emotions he has for these animals through his work.