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Jason Esquijarosa

Drawing out my life

I cant explain, at the moment of creation, why I draw what I draw. When I step back and look at my work it sometimes catches me by surprise.

I guess you could say that I draw blind and the way that I'm feeling determines what/how I draw. Drawing is the best listener I have to talk to its my own personal journal. I can tell my paper with my pencil anything I want and I feel better and safe. Its funny because I am a private person about my emotions, yet I publicly expose my personal life to the world. The funniest thing is that my personal life (my struggles, pain, losses) sits on a piece of paper in perfect view of the world, and at the same time no one really knows what made/makes me draw what I draw.

Everyone has an opinion and that's it. Everyone can look at my art, but where it came from, the emotion or event in my life that is expressed with these extreme shades of dark and light on paper, is mine....

As an artist I am truly self taught. The only guidance I had was that of my father, my mentor.

He used to show me how to sketch stationary objects. He said to me "In order to sketch an object you must know how to feel the object in your mind and through that use the pencil to convey what you felt." That is how I draw but instead of just drawing objects I draw feelings and sue to how I feel I will shade, curve, or contort the images.

My daily activity has strong influences on the visual texture and amount of shading I use. I choose to work with graphite because it is what I thought was unique on canvas and when using graphite on canvas you keep very busy, further more it removes what might be on my mind and calms me. I found that drawing is not just my journal, but it is my life on paper and through some graphite, paper, canvas, and or wood I can convey some of myself to the world and feel free of pains, worries and so on.