EP 8 Evelyn Jean : A Lightning Bolt Awakening, from the Music Scene to Film and Performance, then Ultimately to Painting.
Today, on the Art Seeker Stories podcast 8th Episode I’m delighted to chat with London based artist Evelyn Jean, a visual artist whose career began after 12 years in the music industry, where he became increasingly frustrated at the limits of the medium and began practicing visual art as a method for a new way of performance and true expression of his real feelings.
In doing this Evelyn seeks to create art that speaks to the soul and to attract a different kind of audience to his work.
His work covers many mediums including, painting; filmmaking; literature; music; performance, and installation.
Of his work he says,
"I am distracted by human behaviour and how we really feel about ourselves underneath the veil.
I see life and art being played out like a film script with more control over it than we realise. The ability to rewrite every scene."
I met Evelyn briefly in early 2020 just before our first lockdown at a show we were both exhibiting in, ironically called 'Fake News', and virtually more recently at the exhibition, 'The Shape of the New'.
Today I have cut Evelyn’s episode in two, and this is his part 2 of his artist residency on Art Seeker Island. Wow, we had such great fun and our imaginations ran wild, if not a little bit crazy. This is a real journey weaving in and out of time, into a metropolis melting pot of culture, in and out of reality and the imaginary.
We start off with a spark of change, like a lightning bolt, a true awakening- from the music scene switching to film and performance and ultimately to painting. We visit the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and then move on to Lufi’s book swap.
Evelyn borrows my Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera and he swaps it for Down and Out in London and Paris by George Orwell.
If you haven’t heard Evelyn’s first part one, it is definitely worth a catch up - it's on episode 7, and we talk about Evelyn’s 3 Artworks for company on Art Seeker Island.
The Juniper Tree by Joan Jonas, Street Scene Chicago Archibald Motley and Atlantic Civilization by Andre Fougeron.
You can find more about Evelyn:
Website: www.evelynjean.com
Instagram: @evelynjean_art
Youtube: Evelyn Jean Europe