| I have never looked for meaning in my work. The things I draw have always been, in my mind, simply for aesthetic appeal. I often find myself categorized with pinup and erotic artists. I think in this category, artists are not expected to create meaning. I’ve been told my work evokes different emotions in different viewers. Ultimately I think that is what art is supposed to be. If I create an image and display it, at that point every viewer is an owner. What the image means to them or how they relate to it is up to them. Art can be very personal and I wouldn’t want to tell someone what to see in my art. I feel that artists graduate under enormous pressure to put meaning into their work, to "challenge conventional beliefs." |  |
Jason Levesque
I have never looked for meaning in my work. The things I draw have always been, in my mind, simply for aesthetic appeal. I often find myself categorized with pinup and erotic artists. I think in this category, artists are not expected to create meaning. I’ve been told my work evokes different emotions in different viewers. Ultimately I think that is what art is supposed to be.
If I create an image and display it, at that point every viewer is an owner. What the image means to them or how they relate to it is up to them. Art can be very personal and I wouldn’t want to tell someone what to see in my art. I feel that artists graduate under enormous pressure to put meaning into their work, to "challenge conventional beliefs." I personally don’t buy into that. There have been artists in history who have created successful commentary on the changing world around them.
But those groundbreakers aren’t unleashed by the hundreds; they are the very, very few. In a graduating class of 300 students, preparing them all to judge their success by how they change the world is ridiculous. Young artists will exhaust themselves in their attempts to fill their work with meaning or rushing to find their definition.
As for the erotic aspect of my work I find my work pretty soft-core as the scene goes. I’ve been linked up by many a sex blog labeling my art as erotic, so if that is what the internet says, it must be so. Last year I illustrated a cover for Boston’s WeeklyDig, the cover portrayed a girl "hog- tied" in Saran wrap.
The image was playful in nature, but the paper was blasted for "condoning violence against women." In the following month syndicated columnist, Dan Savage defended my work saying that the playful nature of the illustration suggested a consentual act. He went on to say that that the interpretation of such art is often very telling of the viewer. I believe this to be true.
My methods have evolved over time and at this point, I do all my best work in Photoshop. I’ve been working in Photoshop for about nine years and picked up the techniques in this time that allow me to put create anything I can imagine. A few years ago I picked up a Wacom tablet and spent some time getting used to it.
Tablets can be difficult to get used to at first but in time they speed up the process and allow me to "sketch" natural looking lines. Over time I’ve created a couple dozen "custom brushes" in Photoshop that allow me to bring realistic textures into my work. I scan paper textures and use blending modes to apply them to my finished work. This gives the illustrations a more natural tangible feel.
I think my first big influence was the Japanese animation "Akira." I saw it for the first time when I was 13 or 14 and fell in love with the style. I had tried to get into comic books but never found a taste for the over-rendered muscled men and women. The anime influence is still visible in my work today but I see it diminishing over time. Being a pubescent young man, I had acquired a small collection of "girlie magazines" from which I referenced a lot of drawings at the time. I remember distinctly locking my bedroom door and breaking out the Playboy’s and blank paper and sketching all through the night.
This was likely what birthed the preoccupation with pinup style work. I idolized the artists that were published in those magazines. I still hope one day to have work published in playboy. I guess that will be seeing things come full circle.
