Heavy J
“Art is my profession. Color mixing is the most important thingin an art job because it makes the art bright and fresh. I dream about it. I take many hours to think about how to draw it correctly. That is why I am always on it.”
Born in 1975. Apprentice of Ras Portey, and later D.A. Jasper. Began painting movie posters about 1990, as a teenager. Hung out and painted with Stoger early in his career, even combining their names and creating confusion as to attribution in their work from the early 1990s. Prolific. Loves to create symmetrical rippling of clothes a la tuck-and-roll upholstery. Likes a single color background to offset his mostly multiple image movie posters. Prefers commercial canvas. Kung Fu paintings are his specialty, but he also excels at imagination-driven Ghanaian and Nigerian movies. Images at times taken from freeze frame sketches of video viewed in the comfort of his own living room and then customized for the video distributor. Often uses pastel, solid colors (atomic orange, pink, watermelon, lemon yellow) as borders. Loves explosive, billowing fire with “#” signs and molten baseball bat projectiles blasting from the concussion. Can be very painterly when he takes the time. Since the millennium he is more active as a teacher overseeing his busy workshop of teenage apprentices than as a painter of posters per se.