The Arts & Culture Journal

The Art Department at Fallyrag has long held a love for figurative art and so it came as a welcome surprise when Jason Lee Gimbel dropped this collection into our laps.

A member of Denver's oldest figure drawing group (at 18 years,) Jason only began to re-draw the human figure in 2006. Caught between simple draftsmanship and fine art, Jason has explored the relationship of life drawing with new digital possibilities; producing the collection we see here.

Critics of digital editing insist that it somehow takes away that crucial notion of immediate head-to-hand flux. Many hold dear the idea of an artist retiring from a day in the studio covered head to toe in oil paint but, clearly, times are a-changin'.

The instantaneous, fluid movement isn't replaced or substituted in Jason's work - it is simply delivered in a new exciting form. If digital art is good enough for Hockney then who are we to argue? Similarly to Hockney, Jason keeps elements that we identify with painting. There are smudges, drips and varying brush strokes - life-drawing sketches are laboured over in bouts of creativity from paper to screen.

Jason’s masterful handling of this medium creates enduring, lustful images and changes our perception of computer art. But aside from creating stunning pictures, there is a little more to it than that:

“Living systems in conversation is one definition of metabolism that gave rise to this recent body of work. My art is inspired by the definition of words and new discoveries in science. A visual metaphor that explores the production and absorption of art. This definition falls closely to my personal definition for what art is; an act of participation over consumption. The former of greater importance but always a close relationship. I am a conceptual figurative artist and explore all my ideas and discoveries through the use of the human form.”