I'm fascinated by the way in which we create archetypes in order to serve a purpose, only for them to take on lives of their own, like Frankenstein’s Monster. It's generally accepted that there were conspiracies underpinning a series of political assassinations in the 1960s that fundamentally changed the trajectory of global politics in an oligarchical direction. Such conspiracies were fictionalised through the creation of the lone gunman myth – the shooter who has no clear motive other than their social alienation. This only served to convince a public all too aware of its own alienation, which has since accelerated to a point in which that same public now produces actual lone gunmen on an industrial scale.
The title of this series, It takes a village, was cribbed from Hillary Clinton's 1996 children's book of the same name, whose title was said to have been borrowed from vaguely cited African or Native American proverbs about society’s obligations in the raising of children. Clinton’s book was written during the most extreme period of the privatisation of the public sphere in the modern era, a process that only accelerated the conditions for social breakdown.
I drew every picture of Lee Harvey Oswald available on a Google Images except for that of his murder. He existed as a person in the public eye for three days. These twenty-six drawings are a selection of them.
– Jeremy Lawson
Jeremy Lawson (b. 1980, Warren, PA) is an artist living and working in New York City. He received a BFA from Syracuse University in 2003, and an MFA from Hunter College in 2021. Most recently, his work has been exhibited at CFHILL, Stockholm (2022); Harper’s, New York (2022); Hauser & Wirth, New York (2021); studio e gallery, Seattle (2021); and Kristen Lorello, New York (2019). Chiefly using painting as a medium, his work skirts the conflict between desire and obligation.
40 pages, 21 x 27 cm, perfect bind, softcover, Perimeter Editions (Melbourne).