Jerry Blessing Jr.
“My name is Jerry Blessing Jr. (b. 1990) and I am a self taught artist from Fresno, California. I have been drawing for nearly my whole life, but I did not begin painting until I was late into my 20’s. My work centers around the human figure and the ways that we perceive one’s identity as being either beautiful or ugly, both physically and emotionally. The reoccurring theme of including teeth throughout my work is one of the key elements I use to show how we define one’s image based on the context of their overall appearance. I feel that it perfectly represents the idea of the beautiful and the ugly which are codependent on one another; the idea of beauty cannot exist without the idea of ugly and vice versa. By deconstructing and refiguring one’s identity, it thus changes our expectations of the definition of “beauty” and “ugly” and aims to make the viewer question what those definitions truly mean, and is it possible that they are both one in the same.”