When Push Comes To Shove
The Art of John Tyson
April 12 - May 18, 2024
Storefront Gallery
Art by John Tyson
John Tyson’s drawings are sophisticated, - bringing into play his deep literary resources, including a love for the handwritten letters of Emily Dickinson, the poetry of John Giorno and Ezra Pound, as well as references to the music of the Ramones. These diverse sources are embedded in his heart and resurface in drawings as quips, quotes or disembodied fragments. The words bond with the densely scribed and worked backgrounds. For Tyson, the act of rendering becomes an act of attribution and love.
John Tyson (b. 1958) served several criminal sentences in the Wisconsin prison system. He was released in 2017. He grew up in Oak Park, Illinois until the family moved to a rural area near Elizabeth, IL when he was in 8th grade. He attended Shimer College and later moved to Milwaukee with his wife and two sons where he developed an interest in outsider/folk art and took frequent trips to the south to visit artists and purchase work. He says, “I respond to stimulus like we all do, in my own way — it comes through my eyes, my ears, my senses, filtered through my brain but in the chaos that is called incarceration and the diagnosis of throat cancer, a clarity developed. Emily Dickinson and Henry David Thoreau gave me the tools — pencils and paper — I had and have the silence.”
John Tyson at home.