John Mallett began his Unatomy paintings more than 8 years ago while working as a commercial artist in Chicago. He has produced more than 210 works so far and continues to add to the prolific body of work. The framework for the series came from doing loose, watercolor anatomical paintings in life drawing sessions at Hubbard Street Lofts. As the initial works grew into a larger ongoing project, a set of guidelines emerged for how the forms would be constructed. After the initial anatomical underpaintings are made, they are broken down, desexed, derailed, then rebuilt over the course of several sittings. When making design choices Mallett tries to follow an anti-rhythm theme of “not like before”.

Mallett documented his creative process, along with personal anecdotes, self criticism and encouragement, via diaristic writings on the backs of many of his paintings. Much like a nightly journal entry, they give accounts of what he went through to create the piece, mixed with his own thoughts, experiences from his day, hopes, dreams, fears, and insecurities.

Mallett pays particular attention to his own process and habits for creating. He notes the time of day, location, weather, temperature, what he’s eating or drinking, who is nearby, what he’s done earlier in the day, and what he has planned later. All of these variables seem to feed into the work and his own analysis and response to the work.

Mallett takes an engineering approach to constructing his figures, thinking about the structure and construction of pieces that make up the whole. They follow the rules of physics as we know them. They have weight. They are built, connected and attached, made of material and held together by parts. But they are not of this world.

Throughout the life of the project, Mallett continued to make other work and complete other artistic endeavors. He actively wondered if he was done, had burned out, or lost his magic, but would find himself re-engaging with old pieces and finding inspiration from ideas he had started and then had set aside.

Mallett reveals an almost observer-like sense of his own work, noting things about his characters as if they happened by chance, and building up his own excitement about seeing what comes out next. His self-evaluations consider not just the forms and whether they fit the criteria of the project, but also his own involvement. He finds such sustenance in creating his paintings, he quite literally uses them to maintain his mind and body.

As the project progressed, so did the guidelines. Mallett discovered specific rules for what he wanted to include or exclude, how to hit the right combination of notes to achieve a chord he knew was somewhere out there, he just hadn’t captured it in paint yet.

Mallett currently lives and paints in Columbus, Ohio.