GALLERY
Artist statement
Hello, I'm Jaylen, i’m a 25-year-old artist whose creative journey weaves together a unique tapestry of influences, styles, and a passion for self-expression. This is my first year as a middle school art teacher with a Bachelor and Associates degree in Art, while also furthering my education with getting my masters. At the core of my artistic endeavors lies a style or an aesthetic that connects fields like streetwear, high and low fashion, graffiti, anime, American cartoons and rap music to create a body of work that engages these factors and manages to make a cohesive and compelling body of works that creates a sense of advantageous therapy. My art style and aesthetic revolves around my clothing brand called Friday Therapy. Friday Therapy centers around the idea of how I found the art I make whether it be making clothing, paintings, or drawings, it became a form of therapy for me.
My goal for my work is to bring back childhood memories and feel as if it’s showing the change for a new phase in progression and understanding. I try to capture the simple but beautiful things around us and give them a larger meaning with an attempt to show how art does not have to be detailed to be a compelling work, but a simplistic design or a simple word can form a compelling composition. My inspirations or my biggest influences in my art styles and aesthetic are artists like Takashi Murakami, brain Cause Donnelly, Hirohiko Araki and Jerry Lorenzo. I found my art style or aesthetic have taken aspects from each of these respected artists and are still evolving each day. My work takes aspects of the super flat aesthetic like Takashi Murakami but instead of using classical Japanese art and contemporary Japanese pop culture I use more underground and American pop culture. A majority of my work uses bold outlines, flat coloring, and a decided lack of natural perspective, depth, and three- dimensionality Like KAWS.
My creation style ranges from drawings, painting, printmaking to clothing design. I really try to focus on Western pop culture, and fashion to create an engaging world and characters within my art like Hirohiko Araki. Like Jerry Lorenzo I use my brand to connect high fashion culture with streetwear culture. I use my brand to create items of clothing with minimal branding with a major focus on quality garments and close attention to detail on the construction of these items to show how simple an item could be and have minimal details and still be a compelling work or item. My clothing uses simplistic and distorted design or words to form a compelling composition.I want my work to give the audience that I create memories of childhood melodies and feel as if it’s showing the change for a new phase in progression and understanding. Growing up I wasn’t the smartest kid and I struggled a lot and fashion and art was my outlet in feeling normal and my big source of happiness.
Within my art, I try to capture the simple but beautiful things around us and the feelings that some feel whether good or bad and give them a larger meaning with an attempt to show how art does not have to be detailed to be a compelling work. I want my work to be a form of therapy and happiness like the process of creating the work was for me. I want my work to resonate with everyone and inspire them. Friday therapy was created to teach individuals that nothing is impossible and all you need is passion and dedication for what you want and all things are possible.
