Open Door Gallery

Jon Sarkin

The Unchained Brain

April 28 - August 29, 2016

Artist Reception: May 5, 2016 4-7pm

After a brain hemorrhage and a stroke that nearly killed him, the once-shy, ambitious chiropractor awoke with an effusive, unfocused need to create. He awoke a different man in body and spirit. He was deaf in one ear, his vision splintered, and his balance permanently skewed.

Neurologists told him his brain had changed. It had been wounded, sliced up, and parts removed. The neurons that were left had been forced to make new connections and find new meaning.

Eighteen months after his stroke, it became increasingly difﬁcult to maintain the semblance of his former life. He tried to go back to his practice, but he no longer had adequate coordination, his mind wandered, and he preferred to doodle and draw on his ofﬁcial stationary instead of seeing patients. Sarkin became obsessed with drawing.

These new drawings were different from the kinds of random sketches he had made before his stroke. They were not the visual jokes and puns of the past, but distorted cartoon faces with symbols, like Moebius strips, that sometimes overlapped or grew out of the faces. The images kept coming, spilling out of some dark unknown place in his brain.

Jon is unable to see the world as a whole, and unable to ignore it in its infinite detail. His brain constantly tries to make sense of the world, and he constantly tries to make sense of his brain's failure - through colors and images and words. He cannot stop, he does not want to stop. In fact, he is afraid to stop. He is an accidental artist; he has the need to draw, to put it all down on paper. It is his engine, his purpose for living.

Jon has been featured in Vanity Fair, ABC Medical Mysteries, Discover Science Channel Documentary "Tormented by Genius", GQ, Art News, and the American Visionary Museum of Art. Jon created the album art for Guster's latest album, Easy Wonderful, and he also created art for (and appears in) their music video/single "Do You Love Me".

Tom Cruise's production company is developing a movie based on his life story. Jon lives in Rockport, Mass with his wife Kim and son Curtis, daughters Robin and Caroline. He works every day in his studio in the abandoned fish factory on Gloucester's waterfront.

The Open Door Gallery promotes the work of artists with disabilities and shifts our community's perceptions of ability while enjoying quality art.