Artist bio:
Jai Mitchell's works have a special pull. At first glance, the paintings exhibited here may appear dark and scary. Deep within however, they are a closer study of an inner unspoken world. Their apparent darkness challenges the viewer to break through it. It is difficult to confront Jai's paintings without scrutinising them in detail and trying to get to the bottom of their emphatic strokes. They move, crystallising into an unwanted pain, insisting to a intenser magnitude on the symbolic of the Unspoken, of the Unsaid. Jai's images breathe – on the surface and somehow deeply. Through and through. The vocabulary of his strokes emerges from pain: he transforms it into visual memory. These works become clues to understanding the unspoken, working from a subconscious impulse using all that is left to use; both in the inner and outer world. By using less colors, Jai Mitchell makes sure that the materiality of the color reveals its own quality and naturally turning the eyes more to the character of the work. A self-taught artist, constantly expressing with forms, lines, color- (as much that he can see) and materials, ultimately, it is the „expression“ that is the most formative element of Jai's art. Through art, Jai came to realize that the paths that lead to fear, anxiety, depression, and hopelessness are not dead ends. With the right tools and support, those paths could lead to creative breakthroughs. Staying close to his inner call, his way has become his goal. Rediscovering art through an art therapy, he puts through gently - „imagine a bird being born from a broken egg!!“ Art is personal and personal is social and political. Born in 1972, Jai Mitchell is a self-taught artist. He lives and works in Washington DC. When he is not painting, he spends his time as the head coach of a para-rowing team: The Capital Adaptive Rowing Program. He is also an award-winning filmmaker with film degrees from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the New York Film Academy. He won the grand prize at the RAF Film Festival in Croatia. 2019. Currently, Jai is working on illustrating the third book by Jeffrey Pierse "The Reckoning series" Jai showed in Berlin, Germany in 2020 |