Today we are featuring the work of Jenkins, we spoke to him and took a look at his work here below:

Introduce yourself, what do you do and how would you describe yourself?

I am a mixed media artist working the UK, and my studio is littered with sketchbooks, vintage photos, drawings and a large collection of reference books, I’m an obsessive  hoarder of vintage graphic stuff and art clutter. I work frenetically, normally on a few projects at once. I work with paint and pencils through to screenprint and collage, layering colour, mark making and printing techniques to create bespoke, limited edition artworks.

What inspires your work?

Pretty much anything, I try to keep my inspiration as varied as possible; unusual finds, vintage design, trash culture, beautiful cuts from mundane images etc.. I spend a lot of time at galleries and sifting through thrift stores looking for unusual references and vintage images. My process really inspires me too, I love working in new ways, trying to combine different techniques. I really like the opportunity for each stage of the process to create something unexpected, a beautiful accident. Sometimes this can be an overprint, bleeding in the ink or a hand drawn mark. I never get attached to anything too soon, and if it doesn’t work I’ll just start again and push it further.

What techniques do you use to create your art?

The process starts with sketchbooks, as always, I love them. I quickly get a number of ideas onto paper, sometimes working through a theme or wait for something to emerge. I’ll then enlarge, redraw and collage elements. I often work large because I love the energy of using big marks and elements at that scale. I’ll then scan this and create separations ready for the screenprinting process. I’ll then pull each screen and paint between them, I never know where this will take the final artwork, it can change at any point. Once that is complete I will lay out all the pieces and hand finish each one individually.

What direction do you want to take your art in the future, is there is a direction?

I’m working through a series of pieces right now and I’d like to continue this, many of my sketchbooks have a theme, and I really like the idea of a narrative and storytelling in my work. Screenprinting has really opened up new ways for me to work and push collage, drawing and painting into much larger works, this is really influencing and changing my work right now. It’s been a really exciting start to the year.

What future goals do you have?

I’m releasing a small amount of limited edition artworks each month and these are being sold online in my store. The response so far has been incredible and I plan to keep this going. I’d love to get more work into galleries in Australia and the USA, I get a lot of interest from there and have great friends who have supported me from day one. I’m also a member of the WAFA collective (www.wearefuckingawesome.org) it’s a really diverse group of artists and the collaborations keep pushing our work in new directions. There are some amazing projects running with them right now.