Jack’s Dad is a self-taught artist who creates paintings and mixed media artworks that combine vaguely representational forms, bold graphic elements and everyday items like magazines and junk mail. Evoking both the expressionist paintings of the early 20th century and present-day street art, his work captures the void between who we are and who we are trying to be. He uses just enough abstraction to force the viewer to use their imagination, allowing them to project their own reality, whatever that may be, onto his work.

 

There is a sense of improvisation in Jack’s Dad’s work, with bursts of color and energetic brushstrokes reflecting the chaos of the artist’s surroundings. He uses typography and commonplace objects, including medication labels and cutouts of body parts, to ground his work in the everyday. (TITLE) incorporates the nurse’s oath with a vaguely anthropomorphic figure holding a baseball bat. (TITLE) imposes the word “DIET” on the body of a pig – which is wearing a pearl necklace. Other work is less literal, using layers of bold color and abstraction to hint at a scintilla of meaning beneath the madness.

 

Jack’s Dad lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife and two children, neither of whom are named Jack. When he’s not painting he can be found playing touch football and stalking the grounds of the National Cathedral after dark.