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Arts & Entertainment

Artist Sparks Emotional Response

Jas Watkins' unique style led to his victory in Patch's Facebook Art Contest, and he revealed the winning qualities that make him tick.

Artists everywhere strive for the type of creative determination that drives local artist and native Georgian Jas Watkins. He classifies his work as emotionalism saying that he intends to incite some sort of reaction from his viewers. Through his art, he shares his inner joy or strife and wants an emotional reciprocation from his audience.

“I like creating things that either make people very happy or infuriates them. I want my work to always invoke some sort of emotional response," Watkins explained. "To me, that's what art is. Either people are put off by it or they embrace it, but it makes them stop and think."

Watkins is a versatile artist, and his arsenal of artistic media includes pen, ink, pencil, spray paint, acrylic and oil. He is also able to create or manipulate his pieces digitally, making his work multidimensional. He also has a fairly large repertoire of skills, including graphic design.

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“I will say that what makes me unique is that I have many media. I'm varied."

Many times, his pieces stem from dreams he has penciled down in his dream diary. He looks for recurring or underlying themes and creates from there. Though his creative process differs from piece to piece, he tends to make multiple sketches before actually undertaking a project. Keeping a series of sketchbooks organized by the seriousness of their contents helps him weed out the good ideas from the bad.

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“I was finding that in my sketchbooks I was having crap ideas mixed in with really good stuff. So I thought, 'What if I separated them out?' Then I actually had almost a chronological history of a piece. I court a piece for a time, and it usually evolves,” Watkins said.

The evolution of Watkins' pieces result in unique works that capture whatever he wants to convey. He admires artists like graphic novel illustrator Alex Ross who worked for Marvel. Watkins says his own ultimate goal is to be the next Dali or Jackson Pollock.

Paint-slinging American artist Pollock has many characteristics that Watkins strives for; Pollock's art is emotionally driven and charged with energy. Watkins says he tends to follow some of Pollock's techniques, especially that of allowing his own art to flow naturally and affect everyone differently.

“My daughter describes my work as being more individualist," he said. "You don't tell people what to see. You allow them to see what they want. And because of that, in some of my later pieces, I have stopped titling them. Instead I'm taking a cue from Jackson Pollock; he numbered his paintings."

Watkins had always practiced his figure drawing from his boxes of comic books emulating his favorite artists. He finally attended art school for commercial art. However, he soon became disenchanted with the concept of producing art for money.

“I realized it wasn't as creative as I'd want to it to be."

Still, Watkins rediscovered his love for art of any form with the help of his supportive wife and daughter. As a freelancer, he offers graphic design, architectural rendering and paintings such as portraits. He said he doesn't disconnect himself artistically from his graphic design and sees all of his projects as artistic opportunities.

“My wife believes in me, her belief in my work makes me feel freer. I don't feel confined with constraints to just do commercial work."

The work that won Patch's was Watkin's “Creation,” which was part of what he calls his “weeping experiments.” Watkins created these pieces with a method of drip application from a CMYK printer and cotton cloths. It was meant to convey the idea that creation starts from a simple point that spreads out uniformly.

“It was a chaotic piece when it was first unfurled. The mixing of these four basic primary printing colors gave it its overall color spectrum,” Watkins said.

The finished size of the winning piece is 36x36 on canvas. He said that if there is enough interest, he will use this work for charity by selling prints and donating profits to Scottish Rite.

“This piece achieved the level of exposure and acceptance that it did because of a fan base that we hope to use for something even more positive. If you want a print, we'd love to send you one. But we'd also like to help these kids that need it at Scottish Rite,” he said.

Watkins said the best piece of advice he can offer to other artists is to expose yourself as much as possible.

“Never ever ever turn down an opportunity even if it doesn't seem relevant, exploit it, because you never know what positive thing can come out of it.”

Watkins/ portfolio can be found here: http://jaswatkins.daportfolio.com/.

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