Jon Skul — Contemporary Art Curator Magazine

Biography

During the height of the pandemic in New Orleans, Louisiana, the hospitals were devastated with an overload of patients infected with Covid-19. Working in this nightmare environment, Jon Skul, helped many of these patients, because he works as a Radiologic Technologist (X-ray Tech). The mental and physical exhaustion led Skul to express himself through his artwork. With his AS degree in X-ray, twelve plus years experience in the medical field, and a BA degree in New Media Animation / Photography, he has acquired a unique artistic vision. With personal experience of dealing with the virus and the health of people, Skul became motivated to create work dealing with the medical field, science, and life. This also gave way to the latest movement, in which Skul coined the term Bioexpressionism. Bio - pertaining to life and science, and expressionism - pertaining to the way an artist views and expresses oeself through one's artwork. The first of his works will entail a series of Bioexpressionism paintings utilizing various paint mediums. Jon Skul is one of the newest emerging visual artists from the southeastern United States. He resides in Slidell, Louisiana and is also where he works at his studio.

Artist Statement

Jon Skul was also known by John Hover draws his inspiration from his surroundings. Working in a hospital for twelve plus years seeing the different issues of peoples health, has influenced him to create abstract paintings using various paint mediums. His work usually has many symbols, vibrant colours, and tells a story. The symbolic elements represent people, viruses, medical gear, and anatomy. Skul also appreciates that symbols can suggest mystery from the viewers perspective in that they may question what the symbol is or why it is there. The vibrant colours is an aesthetic approach to give the paintings a unique beauty. Skul has said, "We live in a beautiful world with many beautiful colours that surround us". Without the various bright colors the content of the paintings could come off as bland. Each painting has its own story of courage, pain, honour, empathy, or power. There is no bearing on an expression the viewer takes from the work, the only importance is that the viewer simply has one. That being said, the artist's overall intent is to portray a positive message of hope and bring awareness to certain health issues that people deal with every day.

What first prompted you to think of becoming an artist?

Where it really started for me was when I was in school at the beginning of third grade and at the end of class the teacher would let us have fifteen minutes of free time. So we could kind of stand up and talk with our friends, play those old school games like arm wrestling or slapjack, or draw. Well of course that’s what I would do, I would draw. I remember almost every day during the third grade I would look forward to drawing during those last fifteen minutes of class. I would draw battleships with all kinds of things on them from helicopters to tanks. Other classmates started to notice my drawings and started watching me draw. So at first I was drawing by myself at my desk and eventually one or two classmates would stand next to me watching my battleship drawings come together; by the end of the school year the entire class was surrounding me watching me draw. This is the first time I realized I would love to create works of art. It made me happy and I enjoyed the attention from my classmates even the teacher.

What kind of an artist do you ultimately see yourself?

As an artist that uses any medium to communicate myself to the viewer, my work will always have some relation to people, life, science, and pop culture. I don’t like to limit how I think of myself as an artist because, what if down the road I want to change how people perceive who I am and what I’m about. So as long as people see me as a professional visual artist that’s what matters to me. Anything I create, I created and is a reflection of who I am. To me it’s more important to know who created the work than to know what type of work it is.

What are you hoping to communicate to the viewer through your work?

It depends on what work it is. More importantly to me it’s about the viewer. The viewer can absolutely love my work or hate it. If the viewer stared at my work with no biasness, then I would hope that one would have some sort of emotional feeling towards it ranging from happy to horrified. Since I have no limits on the type of artwork I do, I also have no limits with the viewers emotions.

Can you explain the process of creating your work?

Right now I’ve been painting, using various paints from acrylic to exterior house paint. I chose this because it was fundamentally the most affordable and convenient way to get the needed supplies and to display my work. The themes of these paintings come from my background. I have an AS degree in Biology and have over twelve plus years experience working as a Radiologic Technologist (X-ray Technologist). So many of my paintings have medical objects or symbols, anatomy, and skeletal structures. I prefer to almost attack the canvas with brush strokes and a palette, building paint layers and texture. I try to take out the thinking process by painting freely because, to me otherwise it’s boring. I let the work speak to me to let myself know the direction it will take. I have made short videos of myself showcasing some of my processes, thus the videos and pictures become art itself. I have only recently begun displaying my work online and I will only produce much more work in time. I took my time in college very seriously earning a BA degree in Visual Art, double majoring in New media / Animation and Photography. By taking advantage of my time in school I was able to take a huge range of classes to learn many technical skills. So my plans in the future will encompass many different works like sculptures, photography, collages, and other various projects from digital art to film. I’m not an artist that focuses on a technical niche per say. I like to think as an artist who creates endless types of artworks.

What is your favourite part of the creative process?

I think it depends on what work I am doing at the time. Generally, i’d say that I don’t think there is a specific part of the process that I favor. For me it’s about the entirety of the process that I truly love. The process as a whole, as one. I say this because if you work hard at what you do during the baby steps of the process there will be ups in downs and even the not so good moments can be a pivotal game-changer in what helps make the artwork better.

Can you give us an insight into current projects and inspiration, or what we can look forward to from you in the near future?

I have noticed a huge increase in visual artworks on social media; many have a relation to the pandemic and their life experiences. It is from artists like these that are apart of the latest movement, in which I have coined the term Bioexpressionism. Currently, I am working on project paintings that I’ve categorized as Bioexpressionism. Bio - meaning life and relating to science. Expressionism - refers to the image of reality that is distorted in order to make it expressive of the artist’s ideas or inner feelings. The themes of my Bioexpressionism paintings are related to science, life, medical field, and people. I am creating a large collection of these paintings done mostly in an abstracted style using a multitude of paint color. Some paintings are done in serial form and some stand on there own. I will end the Bioexpressionism collection when the feeling for doing it gets boring. I have no definite end date but, what I can say is that for certain new artworks would follow almost instantaneously. I treat my work like projects, so it’s like any project you have a starting point and finishing point. I can’t say for sure what the next project will entail, but my technical interest besides painting are in illustration, sculpture, collage, photography, digital art, and film. So it will definitely be works in one of those disciplines.

Website jonskul.com

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