Biography
Jon is originally from Hopkinsville, Kentucky, and moved to Tennessee in 2004. He is studying for his BFA in Studio Art, with a concentration of Painting and Illustration, at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. His work has been featured in an online exhibition for the Videodrome in Atlanta, Georgia. In his illustrations, the topics span a wide variety of pop culture and modern concepts and ideas. In his paintings the topics focuses on the Military and how they are treated like pawns in a game.
Artist Statement
I tend to enjoy working in the fantasy and science fiction front when it comes to my work. I do traditional drawings and paintings, but my work has recently been more digital. I like to infuse several different genres into my work, which has influenced me somehow in my life. Growing up, I was always captivated by novels, movies, games, and comics. Especially ones that took me out of my own world and let me escape reality to a new one. Drawing and painting have always been my escape from stress and troubles. I like to use those feelings to influence what I am working on. On the Illustration side of things, I have solely moved to a digital platform. I tend to use photoshop for most of my Illustration purposes and needs. Recently I have started to use shapes and color to render my work instead of a more traditional method. This helps me breakdown what I am working on, and the process allows me break away and try something new. My content as of late has been centered on portraiture and landscapes. I want to develop my skills in these areas so I can effectively build my own compositions and narratives and utilize those skills in the Game Industry down the road. My paintings are centered around soldiers and how they seemed to be treated like pawns in a game.. This narrative is more solely based around the United States but applies to many countries outside of my own. I use toy soldier images to push this narrative further that things are treated like a big game and expendable.
I have been using spray paint on cheap canvas to convey mass production and inexpensive materials. I use stencils the paint them on the canvas like a graffiti tag, then produce up to ten to fifteen for each stencil. I want to have several of the images in front of the viewer to solidify the narrative. I also have been making the smaller versions of the paintings out of paper and drawing these toy soldiers on them with several different flags representing different world countries. I then cut the paper into shapes of playing cards and put them into card sleeves. This has all been fueled by several various members of my family who were in the Military. They are/ were good people and had no qualms defending our country. But, several of them felt that they were never indeed seen as a person and that they were just a name on paper. One of my cousins equated the training to brainwashing, saying," They wanted you to be a cardboard cutout which was trained to kill.". After hearing these stories and seeing the News of Veterans being denied simple benefits to help them settle back into civilian life, it cemented the idea for me. I wanted to do something that speaks to me, and I believe that this is it.
I have been using spray paint on cheap canvas to convey mass production and inexpensive materials. I use stencils the paint them on the canvas like a graffiti tag, then produce up to ten to fifteen for each stencil. I want to have several of the images in front of the viewer to solidify the narrative. I also have been making the smaller versions of the paintings out of paper and drawing these toy soldiers on them with several different flags representing different world countries. I then cut the paper into shapes of playing cards and put them into card sleeves. This has all been fueled by several various members of my family who were in the Military. They are/ were good people and had no qualms defending our country. But, several of them felt that they were never indeed seen as a person and that they were just a name on paper. One of my cousins equated the training to brainwashing, saying," They wanted you to be a cardboard cutout which was trained to kill.". After hearing these stories and seeing the News of Veterans being denied simple benefits to help them settle back into civilian life, it cemented the idea for me. I wanted to do something that speaks to me, and I believe that this is it.