Meet Jim Green | Visual artist

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

Hi Jim, what led you to pursuing a creative path professionally?
Actually creativity pursued me. It has been an ongoing obsession to create pictures that started when I was a child, up to the present. By the time I entered college, I had discovered 20th century art and all the ‘ism’ movements, to include modernism and postmodernism, all of which I let influence the way I worked, until I was able to put it all together and come up with my own style. Being part of the art continuum that shows the process and progress of exploration, with periods and movements growing out the existing one, is something I hope to one day be an integral part of.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
At present, I’m producing computer generated pictures, a process I came to learn out of necessity. After completing my BFA , my wife and I moved from Dallas, Texas to Chicago in the late 90s. There, I worked in a 1,000 sq. ft studio where I could go nuts on large paintings. A few years later, we relocated to NYC, which had an immediate impact on the way I was used to producing paintings. Unfortunately, at the time, locating a studio space that we could afford was out of the question as anything available rented for almost as much as what we paid for our apartment. Suddenly instead of producing large works, I had a small area in our apartment where I made equally small paintings, which didn’t cut it. Long story short, I purchased a computer and began producing pictures and having them inkjet printed on a large scale. That was more than exciting for me as not only could I create paintings, albeit virtual ones, I could work through all the multiple iterations, making use of mistakes, all without creating a surface mess with paint. Sometimes, circumstance is the mother of innovation.

I think what sets me apart from other artists is my unique style and methodology, as opposed to being part of a collective movement. I am free to make pictures for myself that entertain me and keep me intellectually interested enough to see where I can take them.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
As somewhat new transplants from Brooklyn, my wife and I are still looking for the best time ever here in LA. As for showing a visitor a good time, it would depend on who is visiting us. That said, we would give them a huge taste of the best of what LA has to offer in terms of its culture, restaurants, museums, art galleries, shopping areas, beaches, mountains and desert.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I owe everything to my wife. Really. I mean without her support and believing in me as an artist, I would probably still be working on drilling rigs in West Texas. And last but hardly least, I give credit to the hundreds of artists, both historical and contemporary, that continue to inspire me.

Website: https://jimgrn.wixsite.com/jimgreenla

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jimmygreenla