Meet Jasper Martin | Artist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Jasper Martin and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Jasper, can you tell us more about your background and the role it’s played in shaping who you are today?
I’m from Ohio, in the sense that I was raised here, but I was born in Illinois — which meant a lot of summers road-tripping out there to stay at my grandparents’ farm growing up. As a result, I’ve always felt a tie to nature, plants, and being out in the middle of nowhere, alone, enjoying the quiet. A lot of my paintings reflect the serenity I find in places like gardens, hills, farms, and forests, away from so much of society. My upbringing, in a word, was multicultural. The further you go back into my family’s background the more mixed it becomes, between my midwestern mother’s side and my father’s roots in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Having a mixed family and upbringing in a midwestern setting made me often feel like an outsider, but it also led me to be open minded in who I connected with and let influence me. Its led me to become someone who really believes the future must be multicultural.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I’m best known as an illustrator and character designer! I took a break from business and freelance recently, and have been working on some exciting new personal projects, including a card game. I’m getting ready to fully get back to business, though. Building a skill is never just easy, but I’ve gotten where I am through perseverance. I’ll always be drawing and creating, whether its for business or not. I’ve learned that that’s all that really matters in the long run: sticking with it. Continuing to learn and grow and create. If there’s anything I want the world to know of me, its that it hasn’t seen the best of me yet!

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
If a friend came to visit me and wanted to spend the week doing stuff in NE Ohio, I would probably take them to some of the kinds of places I frequent, like music venues in Cleveland and Akron, hit up Nervous Dog or Angel Falls for coffee, and hike in any of the gorgeous parks we have around! Outside of that, I love to entertain guests in my home and cater outings to small businesses to my guests interests, so it really depends!

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I wouldn’t be where I am right now without the support of my lovely wife! I grow and change as an artist all the time, and as I reshape what my larger goals are and how to execute them, she’s been by my side these past few years to offer support, a sounding board for ideas, collaboration for projects, and more. She’s not just one of my romantic partners, she’s an important creative peer. Natalie Martin is a wonderful musician, and I think all creatives benefit from having a close relationship and tons of deep conversations about creativity with somebody in a field that is not their own. We learn so much from each other!

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