Five Drawings for the Albatross project

I devoted the better part of this creative year to working on a series of oil paintings. The paintings are very labor intensive. My oil painting process involves lots of working and reworking, adding layers of glazes, making edits and corrections until at last after many months or years something pleasing appears.

These drawings are produced very differently. They are one take wonders, made quickly with very little if any planning or forethought. I limit the materials and process to black waterproof ink applied to paper with one nib in one sitting. Lines only! These self imposed limitations allow me to focus my decision making to hand movements alone. 

This refined and immediate process provides a therapeutic balance to my other more obsessive creative practices and relief from the super dense information fields life seems to throw at us all the time online and in the man-made environment. I think of this drawing practice as my own style of  Zen calligraphy.

ARTIST BIO

Jason Traeger’s early work was closely associated with the West Coast Hardcore Punk scene of the early 1980’s. He contributed graphics and drew covers for fanzines such as MaximumRockNRoll and The Leading Edge. His flyer designs from the era are often included in surveys of the period. 

He has released solo records on the K and Kill Rock Stars labels and has toured widely as a musician. 

His oil paintings and paper cuttings have been included in regional surveys at Portland State University and Oregon State University. As a member of Oregon Painting Society art collective Jason performed and exhibited in the 2010 Portland Biennial of Contemporary Art and Tate Modern’s 10th Anniversary exhibit in London.

He has performed Stand-up comedy with the Oregon Symphony and in the Bridgetown Comedy Festival and in  2016 was voted one of Portland’s Funniest Five in the Willamette Week’s  annual poll.

He lives and works in Portland, OR.