Today we’d like to introduce you to Jay Asp.
Jay, please kick things off for us by telling us about yourself and your journey so far.
It seems I’ve always been drawing. Sometimes to avoid boredom–I would tear open the offering envelopes in church and draw on the blank interiors while I sat in the pews during the sermon. Sometimes to impress others–it never ceased to amaze my classmates in elementary school that I could draw Garfield and sports team logos from memory. Ultimately, I drew so much that I started to think of it as a potential career, creating comic books characters in high school and dreaming of working for Marvel someday.
When I went to a state school to study art, however, I found many of my questions regarding improvement of technical ability couldn’t be answered by my professors. So, after transferring schools and changing career paths, I ultimately returned later in life to my dream of making art for a living. I studied with then-McKinney-resident Jonathan Hardesty in his atelier program. Finally, I was capable of producing the work in which I was interested. So, for the past several years I’ve been painting as well as teaching painting at a local high school. I enjoy the aspect of sharing my experience with young artists, which always pushes me and helps to inform my own studio practice.
Can you give our readers some background on your art?
I work mostly in oil, painting realistic, figurative works. I really feel that “there’s so much beauty around us for just two eyes to see, but everywhere I go I’m looking” and encouraging others to look. Perhaps because of my early love of illustration I seek to paint portraits that hint at a story in the life of the person represented. Beyond that, I often latch onto an amusing idea and look for a way to make imagery related to it. It’s great when others enjoy the work I make, but I worry sometimes that I do too much entertaining of myself. Recently I’ve added collage elements into my work. I enjoy playing with the notion “what is real?” in a painting (since, as Magritte pointed out, the painted image is no more “real” than an image glued to the surface). It may be too pretentious to say that I want to evoke Platonic ideas in the mind of the viewer about the dualistic nature of our own reality, but I would love it if people looked at my work and appreciated the beauty of our world and even contemplated the notion of beauty and its origin–perhaps in realms beyond our own.
Any advice for aspiring or new artists?
I often quote John Baldessari’s recipe for becoming a successful artist:
1) Talent is cheap, The better I became technically, the more I noticed all these amazing artists doing work better than my own–it’s like buying a white Prius and suddenly noticing how many there are on the road! So you can’t stay “a dime a dozen”–find something that sets you apart.
2) You have to be possessed, and you can’t will that, which is true to a great extent, but habits can be as effective as pure passion–so if you paint, paint, paint all the time eventually you’ll find you can’t go a day without painting, it’s just so natural. Schedule it! Start early and don’t ever stop!
3) Right place, right time, Maybe you don’t ever get “the big break”, but keep putting yourself into more places, more times…and at least your odds will increase.
What’s the best way for someone to check out your work and provide support?
I’m part of a group show in Fergus Falls, MN right now, but it’s certainly unrealistic for those in the Metroplex to go see it. It would be WAY easier to just check out my Instagram or website (both jayaspart). As any artist will tell you, followers and likes are fantastic, but purchasing original artwork is always a great way to support the artist.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.jayaspart.com
- Email: jayasp78@gmail.com
- Instagram: @jayaspart
Image Credit:
Jay Asp
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