Json Myers says its fun for him to exhibit art works with someone else where the works get along. Typically, he says, his works “bully the other paintings.”

That shouldn’t be a problem in his latest exhibition, because he’s sharing wall space with his mom.

“Two Red Roys; mother & son mid-career retrospective,” opens for a special preview tonight at 6pm at the International Trucking Service Extra Fine Art Gallery (803 Francis).

Json Roy Myers and Roye Jan Myers blur the lines and defy the traditional barriers in art, challenging pre-conceived notions about terms like “sculpture” and “painting,” just as Myers’ gallery blurs, challenges and defies traditional notions about downtown St Joseph.

Myers is bullish on downtown. The promotional flier for the event places the gallery at 803 Francis, St. Joseph, MO in the Downtown Arts District.

We spoke with both artists during installation of the exhibition.

Mr Myers says he became enamored of “the tools, and the agression and the innovation” in sculpture and brings to bear some of those ideas in his paintings. As it turns out, his mom, Roye Jan Myers, has been doing much the same thing for Json’s entire life.

“I physically kind of destroyed the “prissy medium” of painting,” Myers says. “I made three-dimensional, I made wood, I burned into them, I made them kind of strong, physical structures, as opposed to delicate.”

“And she’s doing that on canvas and on paper, using just color. And, using some dimensionality, she also breaks the two-dimensional plane of the painting in a lot of her works.”

Mom says she’s excited about the exhibition.

“We have always thought that our attitudes toward paintings are similar,” Ms Myers said in an interview.

“He lives in St Joseph and I live in Dallas and he didn’t know what I was doing,” she said, “and it just kind of works together. It’s fun.”

“I was brought up with some of these paintings,” says Json. “Some of these paintings are four or five years older than me. Some of them are freshly wet today.”

And yet this marks the first time the artistic family pair have shown their work together.

“I’ve been in all these group exhibits and had all these opportunities to show,” says Mr Myers, “and almost every time I’m in one, I get my own wall, I get ostracized. My paintings are bullies, they’re aggressive, they pick on the other paintings.”

“I can’t bully her paintings. Mine and hers mix in together and they completely make sense.”

Besides, he says “you can’t bully your mom. She’ll ground me.”