Ren Jerome

Year of birth: 2002.
Where do you live: Salt Lake City, Utah.
Your education: I’m a self taught artist, but I’ve got the schooling I needed to be deemed “acceptable by society”.
Describe your art in three words: Trippy, drippy, and bold.
Your discipline: Making art that makes me feel content. I use mixed mediums including acrylic, pens, pencils, charcoal, watercolor, among other things.
Website | Instagram

Your artistic journey started at a young age, inspired by comic books. How did that influence your current style and subject matter?

My start in comic book drawings has affected my art style now in the way that a lot of my art has bold lines and colors, similar to what you’d see in the comics. I have taken a lot of the skills I learned from drawing comic book panels and molded them into something more complex and unique to me. Most of the fundamentals from that time in my life have followed me into what I make now, I have just tweaked them to fit the artistic goals I have now. Knowing how to freehand copy comic book panels has helped me a lot in transferring the images I see in my mind before I make something new onto paper in an accurate way.

You mentioned that you aim to create art that requires a deeper look to understand its layers. What is your process for building such intricate details in your work?

I love to look at other’s art and see the layers and time it took to create such pieces, so I try to emulate that feeling in my work as well. My process is a very long and seemingly tedious one. I start with a concept mentally that I want to create, which can involve concept sketches and looking online for inspiration pictures. I then decide how detailed I want the piece, which helps to choose what size paper to use for that specific piece. It gets difficult to do extremely intricate designs on smaller paper, so for those detailed pieces I’ll try to stick to larger paper so I can really get in there with my pens. Usually my art has more than one subject, so I’ll begin by sketching the one I want to draw first in its entirety. I’ll draw each subject the same way, and then move to the next one. The first layer of sketches will often determine how detailed the finished piece is, so I really try to detail the sketch as much as I can without ink or paint. Each detail feels like laying each individual brick in a house. They’re small, almost insignificant, but each one plays a major role in the integrity of the finished piece. It’s the small things that give the finished piece that “wow” factor.

Snowboarding and art seem like two very different worlds. How do these two passions intersect or influence each other?

Snowboarding and art are very different, but also very similar in certain ways to me. Whenever I’m drawing or making anything really, my mind goes quiet and I feel free. I can be as creative as I want to and make literally whatever my mind can think up. Snowboarding is much the same. As I’m going down the mountain on my board, I feel absolutely free and my mind is calm. I can also be really creative in the little trails I’ll make for myself in the woods, or what trick to do off of jumps and things of that nature. In that sport, you can pretty much do whatever you want creatively. It can really be your mountain, once you know what you’re doing. Normally the inside of my brain is very loud and chaotic, so doing these things feels extremely therapeutic. Doing these things over the years that I have, has helped me feel much better mentally and they both center me to who I truly am as a whole. 

Your work blends surreal imagery with bold colors. What role does color play in your creative process, and how do you choose your palettes?

I used to hardly ever use color in my work. I was a black and white pen and ink artist for the longest time, and color was a little intimidating during that time. I started using color more intentionally about six years ago, and I’m so glad I did. Color is such a fun element to use nowadays. It adds more depth to my work and I find that people are more drawn to my work with color in it. Color is often an element I add pretty far into the creative process because I try to make the structure of the drawing fleshed out before I add other elements into it. There is no rhyme or reason why I pick the colors in my palette for each individual piece, honestly. I pick between a warm color palette or a cold color palette for the dominant parts of the drawing. Sometimes I’ll add in a blue into a warm color palette or a red into a cold one. Adding in the occasional outlier color in a piece can add contrast and draw the eye to a specific part of the drawing. It varies based on the feeling I’m trying to give the piece. Color is super important to how a piece feels to look at, so I keep that in mind when I decide what I’d like to use. The colors I pick are where I feel my artistic little heart wants to go. 

Who are your biggest artistic inspirations, and how have they shaped your perspective as an artist?

My artistic inspirations come in a couple different shapes. I get really inspired from the art that was made during and around the Renaissance period in Europe. People like Caravaggio, Goya, and Gentileschi have inspired me over the years to play with darker subjects and use contrast and dark colors to my advantage. Rococo themed art is also dope but I prefer the darker side of things. Sometimes I’ll use lighter colors, but I’ll always contrast with significantly darker ones. These artists have shown me that I can fully express myself exactly how I want to in my art and not be concerned how others will react. They painted what their hearts told them to, and it helped them work through their own issues. I strongly feel this way about making art. Other inspirations of mine come in the form of eccentric and expressive musicians. I take a lot of inspiration and genuinely admire a musician from Australia named Tash Sultana. She is incredibly creative and is exactly herself. She is very expressive in her music in a beautiful way. She is able to weave different parts of her song into other parts to make it all sound like something entirely unique. She’s a one lady show with some rhythm musicians while she plays live behind her. Tash will play her instruments and then loop the tracks and weave them together. She’ll play a whole slew of instruments in her songs, making them have lots of depth. I love how she makes her songs and seeing her play live was almost a religious experience. I loved every part of it. I feel that using multi-media is much the same. I use lots of different mediums in the same piece sometimes, and I feel it creates depth in my work. Other musicians like this of course involve people like David Bowie, Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix and everybody in Pink Floyd. These artists are exactly who they are unapologetically. They make music for the “freaks” of the world. For the artists. They speak my language and hearing what they’ve got to say inspires me to make the art I do. I believe that its a constant cycle of consuming others’ art as an artist, then using that and thinking about how it makes me feel and creating something entirely unique. I absolutely love getting to be a part of it consistently, and how all of this makes me feel. Art is such a fulfilling genre of things to be a part of in this world. Music is a large part of my art, as well as all the old classic painters. 

You have a unique focus on merging known ideas with surreal elements. Could you share an example of a piece where you felt you achieved this perfectly?

One of my favorite pieces I’ve done as of late is a great example of this. It’s a 22in by 30in acrylic painting of a skull with a jellyfish coming out of the back of it’s head, flowing down the paper in lots of different colors. I also incorporated the bottom part of a mushroom onto the back of the head as a transition between the two subjects. This piece does not have a name quite yet, as I’m trying to decide between “Neptune’s Veil” and “Jellybones Mirage.” This piece is very intricate and combines elements that aren’t normally seen together, in a beautiful manner. This piece is one of my favorites because of the colors firstly. Purples, blues and pinks hold a special place for me because of how awesome they can look next to each other and the blends you can get if you incorporate contrast. I also love this piece because of the story behind it. I had the idea for it during a psychedelic trip and I sketched it out that night. It was my side project for 6 months and I loved coming back to it day after day because seeing progress as an artist really fills some sort of void in me. I didn’t know where I was gonna go with it, but I just kept doing my thing. It very slowly started taking shape over time, and there were points I was unsure of. But I kept going anyway. I was originally going to sell it to a friend I met in the Army, but she ended up ghosting me as soon as I finished it. The point of art for the artist is to make it and express ourselves, not to sell it for a cheap “friend” discount. Her not buying it made me sad for a while, but as I kept thinking about it I became glad she didn’t follow through. Now I can sell the original to someone who will truly appreciate it and love having my original work in their home. It’s all about perspective 🙂

What advice would you give to young artists who are just starting their artistic journey?

To any young aspiring artist out there I would say, just keep going. Keep drawing. Keep painting. Just keep making stuff. Even if you think it’s bad or terrible. It doesn’t have to be for anyone but you. Make stuff for yourself because it’s fun. Because it’s fulfilling. Express yourself in a way truly unique to you. Make your own style. Be you, you will find people who understand. Make things especially when you feel sad or emotional. Making things has helped me through a lot of my trauma. It’s always been a constant and it’s been there for me when literally no one else was. It’s important to have an outlet for how you feel, and art could be that thing. But you don’t know if you don’t try. Find yourself in it.