Jordan Buschur’s recent oil paintings are based on images from mid-century American magazines such as LIFE, National Geographic and Ladies Home Journal. These magazines present a specific history and worldview through the stories, news features and advertising. Behaviors, both individual and international, are clearly defined as good or bad, certain acts are glorified while others are disparaged or completely ignored. These magazines are full of images that feel like home; or more to the point- any home in a rural, religious community in the Midwest.

The act of making paintings from these sources is a way to problematize a clear, moralized viewpoint. Buschur wants to acknowledge the allure of a past era, and the glossed-over romance that accompanies a naïve longing for a ‘simpler’ past. Simultaneously she wants to identify nostalgia as a place of discomfort and anxiety. It is important to recognize that this longing is directed towards a pre-civil rights, pre-second wave feminism, pre-gay rights era. In this way, these paintings can function as a nexus for conflict and questioning.

The figures in her paintings are often engaged in an activity- sometimes work, sometimes leisure, and sometimes that distinction is unclear. Here, the paintings depart from traditional genre painting as the nature of the work or task, or the morality of the worker is left ambiguous. A woman is just as likely to make a painting as she is to make a sandwich.