Jason John

Born in 1980 in Detroit, Michigan, Jason John grew up in Northeastern Pennsylvania. He received a BFA in painting from Kutztown University and an MFA in painting and drawing from the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Jason has been affiliated with Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA, and Arcadia Gallery in New York. His work has graced the front covers of Blue Canvas Magazine, Art Calendar, Poets and Artists Magazine, Visual Arts Overture Magazine, and Weave Magazine. Additionally, Jason's art has been featured in American Arts Quarterly, American Art Collector Magazine and Podcast, Manifest Gallery’s International Painting Books 1-5, Studio Visit Magazine, Creative Quarterly Magazine, and Aesthetica Magazine.

Jason participated in the Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville’s exhibition Get Real, curated by Ben Thompson, and was included in the Huntsville Museum of Art’s exhibition Red Clay Survey. He recently had a solo exhibition at 33 Collective Gallery in Chicago. Over the last seven years, Jason has participated in 100 exhibitions. He is now an Associate Professor at the University of North Florida.


Artist Statement

The subjects that I address as an artist explore the interdependence of personal identity, memory, and human relationships. As a painter, I represent figures ensnared in environments of uneasiness and flux.

Partially or fully concealing the identity of the subject alters the viewer’s traditional expectation of intimate access to the represented individual through the relationship to the face and body. The individuals in my paintings become involved in a relationship between the viewer and the material environment of the painting, either evolving toward empowerment and complete personhood or toward a decentralization into no more than a crafted object deprived of identity, useful only for a viewer's passing gaze. I hope to show the personal struggle of the realization of the self and the evolution toward a complete identity.


www.jasonjohnart.com