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Recent Reviews
Bill Dunlap on "Around Town" Same thing is true of Jamie Wimberly. One of the finest craftsmen I've ever seen. His nude icons, mixed media, new figurative constructions are at the Fraser Gallery at 1054 31st Street. Jamie's work is worth seeing just to figure out how he made them. But the content is so strong you're not going to want to miss him. Bill Dunlap, "Around Town - Best Bet Category," Public Broadcasting System (PBS) Channel 26, September 28th, 2002.
Intelligent Art At A Georgetown Gallery Over the last few decades, contemporary art by definition has become an ambiguous and generalized term with many people immediately associating it with the great abstract painters of the 50s and 60s. A direct contrast to the art of that era and to other contemporary moderns, Jamie Wimberly's work is more technical than visceral, more intended than spontaneous. A recurring subject is the depiction of the red headed woman, sometimes portrayed as warm and very human, other times dark and conveying the gamut of emotion. These alternative images are skillfully placed into and onto what appear to be reclaimed materials, the two somehow achieving congruence and painlessly reaching a synergistic uniformity. The conjoining of the significant and the seeming insignificant, the two-dimensional and three-dimensional, depicts a skill not found very often. Jonathan Ferree, Digital City, September 2002.
Art By Jamie Wimberly Local artist Jamie Wimberly has been making waves on the DC scene for several years now, his paintings of the nude female figure carving out his own stylistic niche. His latest show at the cozy Fraser Gallery is a series of mixed media works featuring his distinctive nudes - often, redheads with pale flesh tones - enclosed in wooden boxes, antique frames and window-like outlines. The show continues Wimberly's rise in Washington's artistic community and makes for an engaging afternoon's viewing. Time Out Magazine, Washington, DC, October 2002.
4 Stars Out Of Four Various reviews appeared in the WashingtonPost.com with a combined rating of 4 stars out of 4. Comments ranged from: "sensual and insightful," "there is something in this show that you rarely see in contemporary art anymore - passion," "very sexy," "haunting and extremely emotional," "very new and different," "provocative," and simply, "Wow!" Various Reviews, WashingtonPost.com, September - October 2002.
New Light Gallery Features Work Of Wimberly In Wimberly's mixed media paintings, drawings, and constructions, bodies are found in constrained, confined spaces, in some instances, literally boxed in, with lines of the figure creating tension, pushing the embodiments of emotional states into the viewer's consciousness. Holding up the nude as an icon to be revered compounds this tension, the figure affixed and hanging in a construction of found objects. The Loafer, Abingdon, Virginia, June 11, 2002.
Gentry, acrylic on paper with Victorian frame, 16" x 12"
Other Press And Media Quotes
Boxed In
Artist Jamie Wimberly is best known for his drawings and paintings of the figure, but he's branching out in a new direction with the Box Icon Series. A collection of abstract rectangles, the work was inspired by the monoliths of Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odysessy, and shows the artist attempting to find deeper meaning through symbols.
Derek Simmonsen, The Washington Times, Weekend Section - Out & About, July 5, 2001.
Message In A Box
"Amour Rouge," the earliest work in Wimberly's Foundry Gallery exhibit, "The Box Icon Series," marks a turning point in his subject matter. From the relatively straight stormscape of "Ohio" to the swirling text on wood grain of "Humming," the 10 other mixed-media works on display include long, narrow, meticulously crafted black wooden boxes suspended on painted wooden surfaces, as well as an installation comprising 21 boxes suspended from the ceiling. Unlike constructivist/ realist sculptor Joseph Cornell, an obvious influence, Wimberly doesn't put things in boxes - he puts boxes in things.
Pamela Murray Winters, The Washington City Paper, Vol. 21, No. 27, July 6 - 12, 2001.
The local artist's show at the Foundry Gallery reveals his penchant for nude redheads (natural ones, it seems), vulva symbolism, and shrines. His devotional constructions feature images of women hovering over votive candles nestled in brown velvet.
- Jessica
Dawson, Washington City Paper
May 19. 2000
20" x 17"
Foundry Gallery, at Dupont Circle, offers us a "voyeur's eye" view of the nude. Painted by Jamie Wimberly, the series furthers the furtive feeling by framing each feminine figure within elaborate old window sashes or keyholes that say "Look" underneath.
-Mark Longaker, The
Georgetowner
May 25, 200
Washington should begin to take notice of this emerging talent and his unique of vision of external and internal worlds.
-Christopher
Blanchard, DC Arts
August/September, 1998 
Wimberly's work explores successfully the moist edge of the platonic - nearly - sensual relationship that always borders the artist-model relationship.
- F.
Lennox Campello, "Exploration Into Self Portraiture," Visions Magazine
for the Arts
January 1998
Other pieces that stand out are...Jamie Wimberly's entry. A Brilliant achievement of a show.
-Ken
Oda, "KOAN Critics Roundtable"
Must See Category, KOAN Newsletter
December 1997
- Max
Pizaro, "Artists converge under Foundry's big tent",
The Northwest Current
September, 2000
- Max
Pizaro, "Artists converge under Foundry's big tent",
The Northwest Current
September, 2000
"The Box Icon Series" is a body of mixed media works passionately constructed on wood surfaces, and persistently evoking the power of the monolith amidst our fragmented urbanization. A suspended box, crafted and embossed in the middle of the composition is a noticeable departure from Wimberly's earlier reliance on the figure, showing increasing elements of spontaneity and experimentation. The radical use of materials, along with the lack of time and space markers, Wimberly creates a vision of reality where sensuality and spirituality are one and the same experience.
Using rich and earth hues,
carefully delineated sharp edged lines and a combination of assembled
objects, Wimberly achieves a refined balance, often resolved in a meditative
gesture. While the paintings stand on their own, they also introduce a
myriad of possibilities to view the work, just as if a story is concealed
somewhere in the nature of the materials used, reflecting the raw immediacy
found in today's chaotic urban life.
In discussing this series, Wimberly says "I believe that we are only
now beginning to experience the possibility of transformation - and dislocation
- wrought by the digital age. And as individuals, they [the boxes] remind
us of our own mortality, but also of the meaning of the moment, of life
itself. Like tombstones do."
"Amour Rouge" is half polished advertisement, half-carnival fence peep show. On a plank of white-streaked wood studded with nails, the solemn white letters of its title frame a pair of deep-red velvet curtains. The left drape is pulled back to reveal … a field of crimson.
There used to be something else behind the curtain. "It was a totally different painting at one point," says D.C. artist Jamie Wimberly, who altered "Amour Rouge" about a year ago. "I used to paint lots of nudes." Figures - or parts of figures - framed by found objects and mandala-like patterns used to be a hallmark of his mixed-media works.
"The figure is captivating," notes Wimberly, "but it's also limiting. People has an immediate reaction to it. It didn't bring the mystery - the thinking - I wanted. People were so focused on the figure that it hindered my development in terms of the entire space - making … and integrated whole." So now the viewer must look within the red field - or the entire composition - for meaning.
"Amour Rouge," the earliest work in Wimberly's Foundry Gallery exhibit, "The Box Icon Series," marks a turning point in his subject matter. From the relatively straight stormscape of "Ohio" to the swirling text on wood grain of "Humming," the 10 other mixed-media works on display include long, narrow, meticulously crafted black wooden boxes suspended on painted wooden surfaces, as well as an installation comprising 21 boxes suspended from the ceiling. Unlike constructivist/ realist sculptor Joseph Cornell, an obvious influence, Wimberly doesn't put things in boxes - he puts boxes in things.
"The nice thing about a box … it has figurative elements," says Wimberly. "But it is very ambiguous - open to your interpretation of what that box means." At the exhibit's June 22 opening, people suggested "keyholes, coffins, vaginas, portals, [and] wardrobes." A childhood fan of C.S. Lewis' Narnia books, Wimberly likes the wardrobe-as-portal idea, but he is also quite taken with the image of the dark monolith in 2001: A Space Odyessy, which "replicated itself - reflected light and yet sent out messages - interacting with the universe."
Although Wimberly suggests many interpretations for his work, he alludes only obliquely to an obvious theme: determinism and fate. The boxes, and what's around them, often suggest the inevitable patterns of the universe to which humanity must submit. In the triptych "We Three Kings" ("Somebody wanted to buy just one of these!" says Wimberly incredulously, brushing a cobweb from a corner of the central panel), the wooden strips along the borders of the left and right panels are arrayed in mirror-image symmetry, and the black-on-brown palette and panel sizes are identical - but the heavily varnished wood grain, the occasional black smudges, and the crackled bronze paint that explodes behind the boxes suggest chaos under control. The goal, says Wimberly, was "at the same time, to make the piece move and yet be stationary." The panels suggest "having a fixed purpose - following the star."
"Easter is even more obviously biblical: Encircling a burnt-umber-hearted box that suggests the cross of a crucified Jesus, smaller boxes that share a sunrise-hued background with domed circles cluster like confused disciples. Wimberly points to a solitary box in the lower left and identifies it as Judas.
"I've always felt that Judas got the worst end of the stick," says Wimberly. "He was the fall guy; somebody had to be the traitor."
Pamela Murray Winters, The Washington City Paper, Vol. 21, No. 27, July 6 - 12, 2001.