{"title":"Bibliotheque x Jaxon Northon","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003ePortraits of the Protagonist\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"charlie","title":"Charlie Ward","description":"\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eCharlie Ward\u003c\/i\u003e, Jaxon Northon creates an arresting portrait that radiates measured presence. The young subject stands alone against a muted gray backdrop; a compositional choice that clears away all distraction, placing full attention on her. She meets the viewer’s gaze head-on—open, alert, and entirely self-possessed. Her expression is neither posed nor performative, but gently exacting, as if inviting you to match her stillness.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNorthon’s brushwork is meticulous, capturing with care the luminous textures of skin, the softness of her shoulder-length waves, and the tension in the rolled sleeve that reveals a geometric tattoo. A subtle light from the left gives the painting breath, sharpening details like the glint on her lips or the folds of a t-shirt emblazoned with “BOLT,” its “O” marked by a yellow lightning bolt that quietly punctuates the painting’s contemporary register.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThough rendered in modern dress and inked with body art, \u003ci\u003eCharlie Ward\u003c\/i\u003e is built with the architecture of classical portraiture: symmetrical, calm, and deeply attentive to the language of the sitter’s face. The result is a portrait that feels both anchored in the now and dislodged from any fixed era. It’s a document of individuality—firm in its realism but generous with mystery.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"RECTANGLE","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43944400519202,"sku":null,"price":5500.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0261\/5348\/4322\/files\/JaxonNorthon2016-oil-onpanel-28x22.png?v=1751733354"},{"product_id":"peter-woolf-barnato-il","title":"Peter Woolf Barnato III","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn this vivid and enigmatic portrait, Jaxon Northon renders \u003cem\u003ePeter Woolf Barnato III\u003c\/em\u003e standing alone in the surreal expanse of the American West, elegantly dressed in vintage Western attire, a quiet figure adrift in the waning warmth of twilight. Behind him, desert mountains blush with the final light of day while a pale moon begins to rise, ushering in the long, dark night. In one hand, Barnato clutches a delicate tumbler of whiskey—or perhaps something stronger—a stimulant, as the artist notes, to brace for what lies ahead.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“The moon is rising to call the advancing long, dark night,” Northon writes, “and he faces it with a small, decorative tumbler of stimulant.” The figure’s expression is pensive, almost stricken, caught in that suspended moment between endurance and unraveling. A single magpie ascends in the distance, a fleeting companion from the desert floor. The symbolism is deliberate: “One for sorrow, two for joy…”, a nod to the old English rhyme that lends an eerie edge to the composition.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThough the painting is richly stylized and steeped in narrative, it is rooted in emotional truth. The work is the result of a close collaboration between artist and subject during a period of personal upheaval: Barnato had just emerged from a long-term relationship, and the desert isolation reflects a fear both internal and existential; the fear of being truly alone. The starkness of the landscape, the ornateness of his rings and shirt collar, the performative bravado of his suit, all these details feel like armor for a man whose inner world has shifted irrevocably.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"RECTANGLE","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43944400945186,"sku":null,"price":5500.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0261\/5348\/4322\/files\/Peter-Woolf-Barnato-III-web-size-22x28.jpg?v=1758474586"},{"product_id":"vincent-van-gone-and-the-mona-loser","title":"Vincent Van Gone and The Mona Loser","description":"\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eVincent Van Gone and The Mona Loser\u003c\/i\u003e, Jaxon Northon delivers a mythic double portrait of two modern wanderers; equal parts allegory, pop-theology, and desert hallucination. Set against the scrubland and shadowed peaks outside Reno, Nevada, the painting captures two figures posed in defiant unity, facing east toward an unseen city and a half-promised future.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p2\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003eThe work plays with scale, reference, and coded detail. It’s at once personal and panoramic, rooted in Western iconography and wired with cultural voltage. On one side stands \u003ci\u003eThe Mona Loser\u003c\/i\u003e — worn, regal, slightly ruined, clutching a nearly empty bottle of bourbon and staring through mirrored sunglasses. On the other, \u003ci\u003eVincent Van Gone\u003c\/i\u003e, her stance both regal and ironic, holds the severed head of María Félix, the Mexican screen legend, styled like Salomé with John the Baptist. A cuckoo bird perches between them, mid-call.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p2\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003eNorthon’s painting draws deeply from visual storytelling: Renaissance composition, desert folklore, fashion editorials, Schiaparelli, Elvis, and Catholic martyrdom all flicker through the frame. The result is a contemporary mythology constructed through presence and accumulation. As the artist writes, “They are partners. One is poor and a lunatic, the other is just poor. One is unmatched in beauty and destined for greatness. The other is just an old sucker toiling away days in obscurity.” The language is sharp, but not cynical. There’s empathy here. Both figures are elevated and undone by their shared delusions and quiet resolve.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p2\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003eThe landscape behind them — Mount Rose, rooted in Washoe legend — functions as a kind of witness; watching these two mortals try to wrench meaning from a culture designed to move on without them. They wear symbols like armor: belts, rings, bruises, and memories. Their unity is part pact, part performance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p2\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003eIn Northon’s hands, these figures are neither tragic nor triumphant. They are in progress; haunted by artistic ambition, romantic ideals, economic futility, and just enough swagger to keep going. Whether they’re seekers, fools, saints, or scam artists is beside the point. What matters is that they showed up, together, and refused to disappear.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"RECTANGLE","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43944407171106,"sku":null,"price":16000.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0261\/5348\/4322\/files\/Vincent-Van-Gone-and-The-Mona-Loser-Web.jpg?v=1757599472"},{"product_id":"la-princesse-de-broglie-deambule","title":"La Princesse De Broglie Déambule","description":"\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eLa Princesse de Broglie Déambule\u003c\/i\u003e, Jaxon Northon reimagines one of the most iconic portraits of the 19th century, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’s \u003ci\u003ePrincesse de Broglie, \u003c\/i\u003ethrough a contemporary lens that is both tender and subversive. While Ingres’s original sits stately and restrained within its Second Empire confines, Northon’s version breaks the subject free. The princess, hair loosened and Marlboro in hand, has left the salon behind. She now walks the banks of the Seine on her own terms—163 years after her death.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p2\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003eThis painting was created for \u003ci\u003eBeyond Original\u003c\/i\u003e, a group exhibition hosted by Modern Eden Gallery, in which artists were invited to reinterpret canonical works from art history. Northon’s selection of Ingres was personal as well as formal: it is, he explains, “my wife’s favorite painting at the Met.” In this version, the princess is played by the artist’s wife, Crystal Sugartown Esparza Northon; an act of homage, yes, but also of intimacy. The recreation becomes a double portrait: one of a historical figure who never quite belonged to her own world, and one of a present-day woman who steps into that role with disarming ease.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p2\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003eThe result is a painting that’s lush with contradiction. Northon retains the sumptuous blue satin of the original dress, but trades Ingres’s porcelain idealization for a real human presence; alert, dignified, slightly unguarded. “I borrowed the pose from one of Ingres’s early sketches,” Northon says, “and tried to channel his total disregard for anatomical accuracy—but I’m not as bold as he was.” Still, there’s courage here of a different kind: the willingness to take a beloved image and quietly undo its hierarchy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p2\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003eIn place of the original’s aristocratic enclosure, Northon gives us a 21st-century Paris just beginning to shift into dusk. The background is populated with real landmarks—the Musée d’Orsay, the Passerelle Léopold-Sédar-Senghor—subtly anchoring the fiction in documentary space. What Northon offers, ultimately, is a speculative moment: what if the princess could step out of time and live, even briefly, on her own terms?\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"RECTANGLE","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43987637141538,"sku":null,"price":6500.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0261\/5348\/4322\/files\/JaxonNorthon-LaPrincesseDeBroglieDeambule.webp?v=1753122998"},{"product_id":"portrait-of-bambi","title":"Portrait of Bambi","description":"\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003eIn \u003ci\u003ePortrait of Bambi\u003c\/i\u003e, Jaxon Northon presents a poised yet charged image of Crystal Collazo-Esparza, painted in 2012, the year the artist and his subject first met. Against a backdrop of dark clouds and distant mountains, she emerges from a strip of vivid green grass that runs along the base of the composition. Her fitted black dress is cinched with a leopard-print belt, a note of elegance set against the scene’s surreal elements.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDraped across her shoulders is a small fawn, its head resting gently on her left shoulder while her right hand loosely holds its hind legs. The gesture recalls her nickname “Bambi,” given for her slender, graceful build and long limbs. In her left hand she holds a detailed anatomical heart, deep red and veined, with the name “Jerry” faintly inscribed—a private reference to an alter ego of the artist.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe painting balances fashion-model composure with layered symbolism. The fawn suggests innocence and fragility; the heart anchors the scene in the visceral and mortal. Northon’s controlled brushwork and deliberate staging heighten the tension between these poles, allowing beauty and mortality to share the same frame. Created at the outset of their relationship, the portrait now carries the added weight of their eventual marriage, preserving both an early personal moment and a symbolic narrative within a single image.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"RECTANGLE","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43987668369442,"sku":null,"price":10000.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0261\/5348\/4322\/files\/Bambi-Print.jpg?v=1760633828"},{"product_id":"big-apple-atalanta","title":"Big Apple Atalanta","description":"\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003e“Abandoned at birth because her father wanted a son, Atalanta was raised in the wilderness by a bear sent by the goddess Artemis.” The myth begins in rejection and survival, a girl by the wilderness itself. In \u003ci\u003eBig Apple Atalanta\u003c\/i\u003e, Jaxon Northon draws that inheritance into the present, painting her as a woman of defiance and self-possession, rooted in the figure of Joyel McDaniels of New York City.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p2\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003eEvery detail in the portrait carries a trace of her legend. The golden apple glints in her hand — Aphrodite’s snare, the lure that cost Atalanta her freedom. Around her arm coils a serpent, at once talisman and warning. The lion’s head buckled at her waist evokes the fate that bound her to Hippomenes, transformed together into beasts condemned never to love. Even the downward gesture of her hand recalls the footrace — a reminder that Atalanta’s fate was tied to the ground she conquered with speed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003eAnd yet, Northon stages her not as victim of a god’s plot but as something closer to defiance itself. The portrait is taut, the figure alive with self-possession. She looks directly outward, her gaze steady, as if to say the myth may have been written but the woman is still her own. “Atalanta became a fearless huntress — a wild woman symbol of independence, living free of the constraints of society or man.” The backdrop opens onto farmland and sky, a stage where contest and destiny once played out, but here it feels secondary. What commands the canvas is her stance, her will, her unshakable knowledge of self.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p2\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003ePainted with Northon’s characteristic precision, the work fuses contemporary portraiture with mythic resonance, bridging antiquity and the present. In this retelling, Atalanta’s legacy is not one of defeat or metamorphosis, but of clarity: the knowledge that even gods cannot diminish the strength of human spirit.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"RECTANGLE","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44100096884770,"sku":null,"price":12000.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0261\/5348\/4322\/files\/Joyel-small-4mb-27x36_f5f751ac-5556-4603-8231-d2da8c43c4d3.jpg?v=1755543254"}],"url":"https:\/\/rectangle.art\/collections\/jaxon-northon-at-bibliotheque.oembed","provider":"RECTANGLE","version":"1.0","type":"link"}