risograph 11 x 17″ double-sided, Jason Young, 2024
Jason Young, 11 x 17″ risograph, in purple ink on pink paper, printed at Moniker Press, and released by Hammock Residency Press, in conjunction with their residency with Hammock Residency in 2024.
Artist Quick Links
Jason Young
Jason Young is a queer emerging artist focused on the intersections between painting and drawing, art and psychology. His work explores energy, connection, emotion, relationships, and narrative. Jason received a Bachelor’s in Communications Design from Emily Carr University in 2008. After graduation, he worked as a graphic designer but left the industry six years ago to focus on art. Recent exhibitions include the Queer Art Festival: Community Show at SUM Gallery in 2021, The Vancouver Outsider Arts Festival at the Roundhouse Community Center in 2021, and the Inverted Pyramid Series: Intend To Upend at James Black Gallery in 2022.
In describing his work, Jason says: Abstraction, spontaneity, and play are the core of my art practice. For the last four years, I have created automatic, abstract portraits of the queer people I have met. Using the energy of the moment and the intimacy between myself and the sitter, I sought to find new ways of conveying identities, emotions, and narratives in my paintings. This body of work strived to investigate the space between queerness and abstraction through portraiture, honoring members of Vancouver’s Queer community. The portraits attempt to interpret the subject’s identity by transcribing the physical and psychic space between myself and the sitter through bold mark-making and color.
I have held a provincial ‘persons with disability’ designation for the last 15 years for various mental health conditions. Though diagnosed in 2008, I have experienced significant challenges my whole life. With this residency, I will speak to my experiences with trauma, disability, mental health, and biography while exploring new approaches and experimental techniques in drawing, painting, and writing. In doing so, I want to create a new space for me to heal and share in the healing of others. Building awareness and dialogue around mental health and trauma is crucial to our collective growth and recovery.
