New In The Studio - May 2018 (Part II)

For the last couple of years, I've grown more and more interested in working abstractly, far removed from Pop Art, which is the genre of art most associated with me. To be clear, I love Pop and always will, but the important thing that I forgot to remember, is that I have to allow myself to grow as a person and as a creative; to be open to new things and new ideas.

I'm very much in my infancy of making abstract art. I've tooled around with it here and there, but haven't been ready to share or to dive further, out of self-induced anxiety of 'betraying' my Pop sensibilities. But recently, I said 'fuck it...let's do this.'

It feels quite liberating to paint abstractly, in all honesty. I'm interested in how the colors play with and against each other. I love how my love of music fuels the creativity even more with this type of painting than it ever did with Pop (ironically.) I'm pushing myself in the direction of capturing the mood of the piece than I am creating a recognizable figure. This is my art for art's sake, and I'm interested in seeing where this goes. (Don't worry, I'm still slipping in the Pop work in between these paintings.)

I'm also taking this new found love and appreciation for abstract and applying it to my screen printing. I've started working on a small series of abstract shape serigraph prints to keep my balance of paint and print. Color has never felt more important than they do in these prints (even if the photo doesn't do the piece justice.

The above piece doesn't have a title yet, but I'm reminded of the summers I spent at the beach, as a kid. I love the look of that really clean and solid blue, and the visual balance the black curved line gives between the field of blue and yellow. Sometimes, basic shapes and color fields make for great design. The relaxing element these colors give off to me is most enjoyable. I'm also excited to see where this series takes me.

Summer in Texas is here early (again), and in between all these abstract experiments, I'm working on stockpiling several new paintings and prints for a few pop-up shops for later in the year. I haven't had a decent backlog of work in ages, so it feels pretty nice to have some work on hand again. More info on those pop-up shops when I have details to share.

Hope you've found the recent website updates and news informative. Moving forward, I'm going to be spending a lot less time on social media and more time invested in making art, building my portfolio back up, and improving my art career. In hind sight, I wish I could have back all the cumulative hours spent wasted on social media, but it has forced me to focus on the now and the future. There is a really big world out there, and it's not as scary as it seems. Living in a world through iPhone screen is not the way I want to spend this life. So...that's that. I'll be posting more new work, updates and design experiments here, even if no one ever sees them.

Enjoy the heat, y'all. Until next time. -J