JASONMANN
Tell us about yourself, how did you become an artist?
Naturally, I started drawing, and painting as a child, and remain consumed with drawing to this day. My fondest early memory is of the neighbor at the end of our road who would watch me sometimes. Her son liked comic books and she would give me a stack of typing paper and comic books and I would trace the covers. Every line had to be perfect, or I would not be satisfied.
I started my career in Cincinnati as a graphic designer, transitioning to professional artist with an exhibition at the Edward Hopper House, New York in 2002. Exhibiting across the country at numerous galleries, most notably The Schumacher Gallery and Chapman Friedman Gallery. My paintings can be seen at Hotel Covington, in the Edward Zwick film ‘Love and Other Drugs,’ in the corporate offices of EMH&T, Kroger at Beckett Ridge, West Chester and many other corporate and private collections from Indonesia, London and across the United States. A unique style of mixed media collage/layering technique defines my work with elaborate mathematical constructions, blending the esoteric with the mundane. In 1999, I became a professional artist. I had been working as a graphic designer and got let go and went on unemployment and started painting one night and have not stopped since. The first piece I painted “seriously” was also the first piece I ever showed in a gallery and the first piece I minted on my own Manifold contract, Trouble For The Voinovich Boys.
Who are your biggest artistic influences?
I like the Spanish painters Goya, Miro, and the expressionist Rothko and contemporary James Turrell and Andy Goldsworthy
Tell me about your favorite medium.
My work is, and has always been, mixed media. I use everything I can get my hands on, most likely a byproduct of my childhood. I am from a small farming community in Kentucky. Growing up, we wasted nothing and produced as much of what we consumed as possible. In my physical work, I use spray paint, acrylic, dirt, wood, fabric, newspaper clippings, watercolor, oil, ink, organic materials, everything and I bring those same elements and materials into my digital work as well. The favorite medium being layers. I build layers of varying mediums to create time, space, texture.
Why Do You Make This Type of Art? Why are you drawn to this subject?
My work is what I have always referred to as collage, the combining of the bits and pieces I come across living in the world, dreams. I take everything and mix it around and place it, arrange it, in a way that makes sense to me. I use mathematical formulas (PHI, Fibonacci, Pi) in the arrangements and research of ancient symbolism, elements of popular culture, mandalas, the esoteric… The paintings are something like ideas or thought processes, in a sense I suppose I create to document and clarify my ideas. I make art to further the conversation of art, to become an artist, to transcend the ideas of self-expression to get to the root of why our ancestors first made marks called art.
Will NFTs transform the art world? Are they even art?
Every exhibition, every piece of art created transforms the art world. Art is an ongoing organic flowing conversation that began thousands of years ago. Every mark made continues that and is related to and built upon that past conversation. The dialog of humanity, the united voice of what is best described as soul.
Are NFTs art, of course, some are, and some are merely speculative assets. My belief is that
‘artists’ create art, the outcome depends on the input. When I went to art school, the saying was garbage in, garbage out. Not everyone who makes NFTs is an artist, nor has the intention of making art. It seems to me that the possibilities for NFT are endless and that at present time art is the best-case use scenario to introduce and explore the possibilities.
How did you become an NFT artist?
Probably the most common story, I heard of Beeple’s success and educated myself on NFT. Throughout my career, I have always tried to explore any new avenues of distribution for my work. I began creating pieces, what became the dEmon_scribble game and was commissioned by a local business to create a pulled pork sandwich NFT.
Where do you find inspiration?
Not sure that I operate that way, creation for me is a practice. Not seeking or finding inspiration, I create without intention and allow the work to dictate the outcome. Trying to maintain a state of constantly working, physically or in my head, while dreaming, embracing the randomness that occurs, striving to not have a pre-designed outcome, never working towards an ‘image’ in my mind. As I work on a piece, elements trigger associations from some random thing I came across in a book or conversation and that builds and builds until an image materializes. My work does lean towards the use of a general overarching theme, I suppose. This helps to eliminate overthinking. For instance, I know I will create a demon. The theme is used to create the framework for the process of creating the piece. My thought is that setting out to paint a chair is more like propaganda than art. Forcing a concept on the viewer. In my work, I try to assemble all the pieces for the viewer to navigate and discover what they see, not the chair I painted. Everything is an inspiration to me might be the better answer.
Describe how art is important to society.
Art and society are the same, in the way that the cells of the body make the whole, the raindrops form the rivers; the leaves show the wind by moving. I suppose I am trying to say art is among the most important parts of what society is and that without art, there is no society. The two are inseparable.
What motivates you to create?
Life, I think as long as I am breathing, I will be creating. Everything I consume with all my senses. The desire to become an artist and add to the conversation of art in a way that encourages others to do the same. To be a part of continuing the legacy of art and artists. The love of the game.
Where do you see yourself in ten years?
In my studio, creating. My work is more advanced and intelligent, my vision clearer, my ability to express my work to my audience improved, and my audience much, much larger.
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