Jay Allen
Jay Allen created art relentlessly from earliest childhood. Initially studying at Elam art school in the early 2000’s, Jay departed to Europe for a restless early adulthood of travel, adventure and uncertainty. Jay returned to Aotearoa and to study several years later. A bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Art History was followed by an honours degree, and a master’s in Art history. Professionally, Jay has worked for many years as a photographer and an illustrator.
Drawing is Jay’s first love, and has been a lifetime source of peace and solace. From early crayon renderings of animals and monsters as a tiny child, to haphazard art school experimentation, to 3am sketched procrastinations amid piles of thesis notes, to sketches of their sleeping new-borns from the trenches of new parenthood. Jay has drawn their way through life.
Artistic influences are diverse, and stem from Jay’s study of art history, love of nature, detail and movement, and an obsessive interest in the structures of the natural world. Jay finds inspiration in 19th century anatomical and scientific illustration, finely rendered early field journals of the natural world, and the aesthetic cynicism of film noir. Jay’s work leans into murky conversations of identity, power and resilience, in subtle visual tensions and unanswered questions.
In this collection, FIGHT FLIGHT FREEZE, Jay combines the fine detail of line drawing with dry point, gelle printing, charcoal and ink. From within the evocative qualities of line and shadow Jay’s works simultaneously explores the transient fragility of natural beauty in the process of decomposition, with the visceral reactions of the living body under stress. The frantic states of flight and freeze, the reactions and adaptation of beings under tension, from outside and from within. Fleeting glimpses of resilience, hope and the instinct to survive, thread through subtly shifting landscapes of dying plant forms. Inevitable acceptance, or perhaps decay.
Contact details:
E: jay.wolfatthedoor@gmail.com
M: 021 044 8933
Drawing is Jay’s first love, and has been a lifetime source of peace and solace. From early crayon renderings of animals and monsters as a tiny child, to haphazard art school experimentation, to 3am sketched procrastinations amid piles of thesis notes, to sketches of their sleeping new-borns from the trenches of new parenthood. Jay has drawn their way through life.
Artistic influences are diverse, and stem from Jay’s study of art history, love of nature, detail and movement, and an obsessive interest in the structures of the natural world. Jay finds inspiration in 19th century anatomical and scientific illustration, finely rendered early field journals of the natural world, and the aesthetic cynicism of film noir. Jay’s work leans into murky conversations of identity, power and resilience, in subtle visual tensions and unanswered questions.
In this collection, FIGHT FLIGHT FREEZE, Jay combines the fine detail of line drawing with dry point, gelle printing, charcoal and ink. From within the evocative qualities of line and shadow Jay’s works simultaneously explores the transient fragility of natural beauty in the process of decomposition, with the visceral reactions of the living body under stress. The frantic states of flight and freeze, the reactions and adaptation of beings under tension, from outside and from within. Fleeting glimpses of resilience, hope and the instinct to survive, thread through subtly shifting landscapes of dying plant forms. Inevitable acceptance, or perhaps decay.
Contact details:
E: jay.wolfatthedoor@gmail.com
M: 021 044 8933