Jason Naylor is an award winning artist, designer, and creative director known to mural hounds and makeup mavens alike. After graduating from Brigham Young University, Naylor moved to New York City to begin his design career at MAC Cosmetics. Six years later, the artist’s biography explains, he set about on his own artistic mission, “spreading life and color into any and every project he could get his hands on.”
“Jason’s brightly colored designs and positive words reflect his zeal for life, his quest for joy and his love of LOVE,” the site continues. His portfolio predominantly consists of brand partnerships and large-scale mural commissions, all encouraging viewers to keep their heads high and eyes on the bright side. Through the ups and downs of departing from his family’s religion and recovering from substance abuse, Naylor has learned the true value of radical joy. This hard-won experience underpins the authentic vibrance of his jubilant creations, crafted of color and confidence.
His career so far has danced between fine artist and commercial creator—every gig Naylor embarks upon requires creative vision, but the parameters shift. Recently, the artist added a new level of complexity to his repertoire with ‘Reading Between The Lines,’ his first fine art exhibition curated by GirlSeesArt at a pop up space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The show closed its week-long run on March 20th, concluding an experience that exposed new methods of relating to his audience.
“The presentation of the work in a gallery setting is so subtle and quiet, as opposed to a mural, which is very in your face,” Naylor told me over FaceTime. “Even the physical barrier of having a door and a room that you have to enter just to see the work, that’s new for me, because I’m used to working on the street.”
‘Reading Between The Lines’ elaborates on Naylor’s electric typography by deconstructing his punchy catchphrases to the gestural level—snippets of letters that ultimately read abstract. Even with this innovation, the works espouse the artist’s signature joy. There’s subtleties to the components that resonate with audiences; sometimes it’s the message, but other times it’s the color or the puff pastry shapes. “I think the answer is all parts are equally important,” Naylor said. “It just depends on who the audience is.”
These tools work. The artist recalled a particularly meaningful moment in his career where one man from Chelsea reached out to say how he and his partner were huge fans of Naylor’s nearby mural, which then read ‘Live Life Colorfully.’ The fan wrote that this mural brought them so much joy, but his partner had recently been diagnosed and bedridden with cancer. Would the artist complete a commission so they could cherish a bit of his sunshine from the comfort of their home?
“I did the painting and I delivered it to them,” Naylor recounted. “It was so beautiful and powerful.” The artist learned this artwork was a surprise, and shared in the joy of the partner receiving his bespoke piece. A few months later, Naylor received snapshots they’d taken with the work once the recipient recovered enough to leave bed.
Naylor has incorporated charity into his career for years now, beginning with his work creating murals for Susan G. Komen 5k races free of charge. These efforts perpetuate the cycle of positivity so central to his practice.
‘Reading Between The Lines’ carried the torch with aplomb. Naylor set aside the show’s largest, eponymous painting to donate to mental health nonprofit NAMI Bucks County in Pennsylvania.
Naylor emphasizes authenticity in the charitable aspect of his career, dodging performative activism by carefully selecting charities that mean something to him. These exist at the intersection of mental health and LGBTQ+ rights—the artist lost his younger sister, an advocate for LGBTQ+ youth in their hometown of Salt Lake City, to suicide several years ago.
“If I can do any sort of good or do some sort of charity in those two arenas, then I feel like it’s authentic,” Naylor said. “The work that I’m doing has a mental health component already—adding joy to the world is about mental health.”
Naylor publicized his intention to donate the painting in tandem with his announcement for the exhibition. He set up an application on his website where organizations could describe their mission and vision for where the donated work might live. “I wanted to hear what kind of impact the painting would have on their community, and how it would help,” the artist explained.
Together, he sorted through thirty applications with another sister of his, his agent, and the show’s curator. NAMI stood out. “They have a waiting room that’s very sterile, it’s completely empty,” Naylor said. “They have patients that come in and sometimes spend the full day or even days in that waiting room. They don’t have the means to do anything to change the waiting room, but it’s a very critical part of the process for helping people.”
“It seems like such a simple answer,” he continued. “But it could be a very critical moment in someone’s life where being in that waiting room could drive them to maybe go looking for drugs or worse. I think that really hit home for me, so I’m thrilled that the painting is going there.”
What’s more, the particular nature of the abstract artwork throughout ‘Reading Between The Lines’ encourages viewers to formulate meanings and messages on their own, an exercise in literally laying down brighter neutral pathways. “Adding visual stimulation can provoke changes in the mind without you realizing it,” Naylor noted. “That’s why donating a painting to a mental health organization where it can sit in a waiting room can impact people exponentially, and it can impact people without them realizing.”
Imagine if every one individual devoted themselves to a small selection of well-curated causes in the manner Naylor has. There are billions of people on the planet and millions of issues at hand, though many can be simplified down to several lowest common denominators—avarice, isolation, et cetera. At its most root core, whether on the street or in a gallery, Naylor communicates a sugar spun call to action for viewers to embrace the self-love and optimism necessary to join him on this joyous path—one mural, one exhibition, one donation at a time.
