Jason Wolfe was born in 1979, in New Hyde Park, NY. He currently lives in western Massachusetts. He graduated from Rochester Institute of Technology in 2001 with a BFA in painting.
How did you get into art?
When I was about six or seven years old, I remember watching my cousin draw cartoon figures at the dining room table and was full of curiosity and genuinely amazed. I really wanted to be able to do the same.
This was the first time I was inspired by someone to create in this manner and was lucky enough to have teachers and parents to encourage me to keep working. When I was about eight, my father found private lessons for me with a quirky teacher in Queens, NY and drove me on a weekly basis to his basement studio. There I was able to work alongside older students who served as additional motivation to improve. There was a series of great teachers and mentors that I can point to retrospectively who influenced me a great deal in this journey.
How would you describe your style? What makes your work special?
My style is very loose and playful. In 2022, I started using bowls and cups filled with paint to create marks in a gestural way to intentionally try to avoid exerting complete control over the outcome, welcoming the accidental and giving a platform where these marks become the portrait of the painting. I try not to plan things out but sometimes I start with loose plans and usually they dissolve once I get into the rhythm of things. The most planning that I really do comes down to picking out the color palette that I'm going to try and work with and the format of the canvas. My work comes from a place of honesty and genuine curiosity in the world we live in and like a magician I take the ingredients and mix them together in a novel way that hopefully makes the viewer see the world in a much broader and more beautiful way. I don't often consider how my painting is going to be viewed by others but more importantly, I am concerned with what it evokes in me and if it is moving me, it most likely will be moving you.
How do you go about developing your work?
The development of my work is simple, show up and paint, don't think about it. If I get started on something, my innate creativity, curiosity, and playfulness with shine through and be the engine that carries me to somewhere that I haven't been before. Sometimes I need a little jumpstart, so I might flip through an old stack of National Geographic magazines to get inspired either by the color or subject.
Who or what influences you?
I'm most influenced by my daily routines, such as, the places I drive by, the places I grab lunch, the changes in season, places I visit, in general, the world around me locally and globally. The places and people that are mostly overlooked become the sources for inspiration when for some reason they jump out at me.
Make us curious. What are you planning to do next?
I am very interested in creating new ways to make marks that have a depth of interest, perhaps more three dimensional. I have no intention of repeating myself, so wherever I go, it will be someplace new.
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