Statement by Robert Sarkis, from the catalogue published in conjunction with the show “It was about painting” at The Whatcom Museum of History and Art, November 18, 2000 – February 18, 2001.

I remember seeing those complex, post-expressionistic and sometimes idiosyncratic paintings by Jay Steensma, full of disparate content. The work, mostly in context of an environment, included birds, fish, snakes, chalices, relics, artists, saints and sinners seeking redemption. His art, passionately and compulsively painted on canvas and paper bag, had the esthetic challenges from the Renaissance all the way to our own time. Some of them were not easy undertakings and many of them did not come to fruition. However, every so often one would succeed and all that risk and complexity would bring forth a work of art that had vitality and excitement with multilayered messages. Jay Steensma certainly responded to the so-called “Big Four” (Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, Kenneth Callahan and Guy Andersen) of the Northwest School of painting, principally to the work of Morris Graves. Steensma was influenced by Morris Graves’ special sentiment for the Northwest environment and the mystical and sometimes visionary response to nature. Jay, by his own admission, learned a great deal from Guy Anderson’s paintings, particularly the use of elongated oil washes on brown construction paper. At times he also employed Tobey’s and Callahan’s approach of loosely painted abstractions in his own work. His journey and indulgence into the world of the Northwest School landed him a treasure trove of visual discoveries. However, Steensma’s wild visual poetry projected a novel intellectual and emotional experience unintended by the principals of the Northwest School. It is my feeling that Steensma responded to far beyond the Northwest School of painting. He was very taken by some of his University of Washington professors, particularly the work of Issacs and Brazeau. He also responded to the national and European art scenes. Many of his multilayered paintings with found objects and immersed collages were homages to the late fifties ground breaking activities of Rauschenberg and Johns. Steensma believed in the power of art to transform our awareness. He employed appropriation, sometimes with reverence and other times with ridicule to achieve his ends. He was aware of the post modern thrust of his time, and with surprising depth and sophistication, he deftly employed deconstruction to materialize his vision. From Graves to grunge, with complexity and contradiction he reshuffled the art of his time to make exciting discoveries for all of us to see.