We had the good fortune of connecting with Jameson Martin and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Jameson, we’d love to hear about how you approach risk and risk-taking.
In 2021 I was living in a small farm town in Massachusetts when I decided to sell all my things and move out to Los Angeles. I didn’t have a car or a job lined up and I knew very few people in the city, so that was a bit risky. And it ended up being a great learning experience. The art I make now is completely different that what it was a few years ago in terms of style and voice. I think that change reflects how I’ve changed as a person and everything I’ve learned since moving here.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
My art career sort of happened accidentally. In 2020 after the lockdown started, a friend commissioned me to draw a portrait of his girlfriend’s cat. Because I had so much time on my hands I ended up working really hard on it. And it came out pretty well. After I posted it on instagram, other people started asking me for portraits and soon I was spending 10-12 hours a day drinking coffee in my room and working on these drawings. That was my first glimpse at being a full-time artist and I really quickly realized that I wanted to keep doing it.

Since then my work has shifted more towards illustration & design. Nowadays I work a lot with music industry clients on things like album covers and poster designs. Music has always been a big part of my life so it felt really natural to start gravitating towards those kinds of projects. My recent work is very inspired by the retro-futurism style of artists like Aaron Lowell Denton, Robert Beatty, and also draws on surrealism and gothic art.

I think the biggest challenge for me has been making the shift from physical to digital media. I got really accustomed to working in graphite and charcoal and in some ways I still prefer putting pencil to paper over working on a tablet. But at the same time there’s a whole other world of possibilities available with digital media and that’s really exciting too. My goal is to experiment with combining the two, and to find a process of making art that’s part analog and part digital.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
To me the Arts District in DTLA is one of the best parts of the city. There’s so many good coffee shops and bars and little shops and it’s all within walking distance. I also live there so I’m a little biased. But I would start there, maybe spend a few hours at Hennessey + Ingalls bookstore then grab dinner and a margarita at LA Cha Cha Cha.

This is going to sound insane but I like to just go on drives around the city. When I moved here I remember driving down Sunset, starting on the east side and going all the way to the beach. You can see a lot of the city on that one stretch. So we’d do a bit of driving and that would probably take most of the week.

Other than that I have a lot of lists on my phone of favorite shops and restaurants that we could check out. Thirsty Crow in Silverlake, Stories in Echo Park, and Fig Tree in Venice to name a few. And of course no trip to LA is complete without spending some time at the Griffith Observatory.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
The book Waking Up by Sam Harris has had a big impact on me. During the lockdown a friend shared Waking Up with me and that sort of caused a chain reaction. I started mediating regularly because of it and as a result I started to view my place in the world in a different way. It was the paradigm shift that motivated me to move to Los Angeles and pursue a career in illustration and design. Most of my recent illustrations are thematically connected to the book, especially Harris’ ideas on non-duality. Also I think making art of any kind is a meditative experience. It requires stillness, awareness, focus, and discipline, which are all qualities of mind that are present when you meditate. So I’m very grateful for that book. I’d probably be in a completely different place today without it.

Website: https://jamesonmartinart.myportfolio.com/

Instagram: @_jameaux_

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