Jared Ailstock is a New York-based portraitist. He creates portraits of individuals who have made a significant mark on their field of expertise, including the arts, theater, and politics.
This painter is one of NYC's most highly regarded portrait artists. Currently, he focuses on creating self-portraits.
In the period from 2008 to 2009, Ailstock created works based on cosmetic surgery procedures, which represented the faces of women in pre and post-operative states, as a counterpoint to the traditional portrait.
Jared Ailstock started to paint in his twenties while recovering from a leg injury. He became known for his contemporary realist portraits of well-known figures in the late 1990s.
Currently his work is characterized by being an experimental figurative painting of an eclectic style that incorporates within the same work realistic, figurative and abstract elements, using technical resources approached both in the history of art and in contemporary times.
Jared Ailstock considers himself a Figurative painter rather than "Realist in the formal sense of the word." He carries out a subjective translation or reinterpretation of reality where he uses images as a pretext to be able to elucidate, and transform things, thus finding new findings and his own expressive technical resources.
In his work, the use of the support (canvas) and the background as a pictorial resource is very important, creating a painting with multiple superimposed layers, where the figure, the background and the support have the same importance.
New York, NY, USA Website
July 1996 - Present
Jared Ailstock is a self-taught artist who started to paint in his twenties while recovering from a leg injury. He became known for his contemporary realist portraits of well-known figures in the late 1990s.
He holds a Bachelor’s of Arts Degree in Fine Arts from the City University of New York, where he received his first solo exhibition.
Jared continued to explore realism, painting black-and-white photographic portraits of his family and friends onto large-scale canvases in precise detail, applying paint with an airbrush. He has had his first large New York exhibition in 1998 at Bykert Gallery. This painter is one of NY's most famous portrait artists. Currently, he focuses on creating self-portraits.
1990 - 1994