Today we’d like to introduce you to Jessica Schulman-Kythas.
Jessica, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
Like most artists I’ve been making artwork forever. Everyone always knew me as the artist. I started out at UGA with just art education, then last minute added painting as a second major. I had panicked at the thought of leaving behind creating things just for myself and not for the classroom, however irrational being a painting major seemed. I knew I didn’t really want to be a teacher after I had made such a pitiful amount of artwork when I was a student teacher; it had sapped away any energy I had left for my own artistic practices. Even so it still seemed impractical for me to just be a Painter, so I started learning graphic design and selling designs online. I was worried to keep painting with it going nowhere and stacking up canvases for them to just sit there, but finally had to yell at myself and just paint anyway. It’s been difficult to market myself as I’m cripplingly shy and self-doubting, but since I’ve stopped slinking away from diving full in to the painting life, I know it’s just the only thing I want to do.
We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do you do and why and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
I like to branch out into a lot of areas of art, but my main love is large oil paintings. Anything I make is figurative, and anything that’s not figurative feels incomplete to me. I usually steer away from any kind of photo realism because it honestly feels pointless to me. I’d never be able to justify it to anyone why that would be something necessary for me to create. I generally paint women partly because as a woman, that is my experience, and partly because I’m inspired by fashion; woman’s fashion is infinitely more intuitively creative and fun to me than men’s fashion (sorry, men). I like to manipulate the female form to feel how fashion feels to me. Our fashion is all about our identity. Even if you’re just following a trend, you’re displaying to the world that you like to be trendy. A painting I create should feel like how I like to feel when dressing up: fun and weird and whimsical with hints of humor. My paintings are an extension of my style identity.
Have things improved for artists? What should cities do to empower artists?
I think it’s become easier to put your work out there than it was in a pre-social media world, but in that way much harder to stand out. It’s great for Instagram to be free and easy to use and find people and get inspired, but then the cyber world becomes so much more flooded. I think in general the best way to help the arts is to make sure it stays in the school curriculum. When people want to take it out of education, it becomes less and less legitimized. When it’s shown as less important, kids growing up will always see it as unimportant.
Do you have any events or exhibitions coming up? Where would one go to see more of your work? How can people support you and your artwork?
As it’s been a short time since I’ve put full steam into creating paintings, I haven’t been showing much. I’ll have a print of one of my works at Space 15 Twenty in LA on June 9th for a show called Girls Art Now! I have drawings and paintings on my Society6 page, jlschulman. I am also on Saatchi art as Jessica Schulman-Kythas. You can also follow me on Instagram as jessicask.art
Contact Info:
- Website: www.jessicakythas.com
- Email: jschul309@gmail.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/jessicask.art
- Facebook: facebook.com/jessicakythas
- Other: society6.com/jlschulman
Image Credit:
I took all the photos of my paintings.
Getting in touch: VoyageATL is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
