Art is a spoken word.  How "that" differs from what we see sets intelligences apart; experience-by insurrection (such, this)- above the barricades but still below, well off a pedestal. The art of John Cunningham invites appeal through simultaneous disposition granted equally the vocabulary furnishes thought, the perceived feeds sensation. It pretends to neither omniscience nor authority.  Handmade matter - breathed life into by human artist - form acknowledges an inheritance of tradition no less than evolution a human face.  The seeds of another time and place always yield renewal in the present, and the present remains abstract.  Reserve that soothes, places even sensuous capture (or animal vengeance) at the beck though not necessarily the call of intelligence, bids commend go dancing with demand; restraint refers all regarded through the prism of a pattern from which, perhaps most intriguingly, eye, ear and nose emerge with valence equal the lilies of the field - John Cunningham, artist, seeks both to admire and dissect, marvel and murder what we know: he portrays: we wish to comprehend.  It is a pattern in the end blends into unknowing.

 

Jack Cooper, 2012