Interdisciplinary visual artist Jack Kohler Byers explores contemporary communication through the use of type and image across a wide range of scales and media. Self-trained, his style is inspired by modern artists such as Picasso. Raised in a small New York town, he became intrigued with the fading letters of fading hand-painted signs during visits to a nearby industrial city.
“These fragmented messages activated my imagination to speculate about the day they were freshly painted, who painted them, and the different events that led to their decay,” Kohler Byers explained in an interview with Art of Choice. “These century-old letters formed a dynamic contrast with more contemporary letters being painted around the city by its younger occupants.”
As he grew up, he quickly relocated to the city to chase a fascination with the diverse and visually rich urban landscape. Currently based in New York City, his artwork is mostly created by using ink on paper, with almost all of his work in black and white or painted using a restricted color palette. While his personal artwork is all done by hand, his commercial illustrations are finished digitally.
“I don’t have the benefit of a formal artistic training, everything I learned was by reading, learning lessons, and picking up wisdom from others,” he says.
“When I first started getting serious about making artwork, I put a ton of emphasis on making something finished and perfect each time. This led to occasional successes, but much more frequent periods of frustration and burnout. As time goes on, I’ve learned how to walk away and let time work on a piece for a bit. Instead of tearing up a drawing that wasn’t coming out the way I want, I now roll it up and stick it in a tube. Months later I come back to it and have none of the prior frustration, and it becomes a kind of game to resolve the chaos into something I like.”
Take a look at some of his work below.
