You let it speak to you before you are told about it: the art hanging every inch of each wall in the studio. The colors dull but nonetheless eye-catching. The smell of dust from a room with one window and a door, neither of them opened, gives a feeling you know you are somewhere there is a story to be told. Before you meet the maker, you meet the art.
Jon Sarkin, as we entered his studio that tightly fits about 15 people, sat in a busted up red leather chair, nearly unrecognizable from the paint splatters that cover it. A contemporary artist with a striking personality, each 12x12 drawing surrounding him on the wall is a piece of who he has become.
He creates art valued by museum curators, yet he throws them on the ground as if they’re worthless. His life hasn’t always been centered around fame and being an artist. At 35, Jon underwent surgery where parts of his brain were removed to alleviate tinnitus, a ringing in his ear. As he woke after, he suffered from a stroke leaving his body and personality forever altered, which was the beginning of his transition to an artist. Neurologist’s told Sarkin his brain was permanently damaged.
Sarkin's illustrations have been featured everywhere from museums and the New Yorker. His life's transition has been made into a Pulitzer Prize winning piece for feature writing, Shadows Bright As Glass written by Amy Ellis Nutt. The book highlights Sarkin's life as he becomes a medical mystery, someone who woke from a coma as both a physically and psychologically different man. Now he travels the world, going to different countries showcasing what he has created, giving speeches and attending events. He is an unprecedented inclusion to the world of artists.
Sarkin became obsessed with drawing as a result of his inability to maintain his former life. Partially blind in one eye, his portraits are akin to distorted cartoon faces with slash marks and asymmetric features. These images are created as they spill from an unknown place in his mind.
“There’s something about symmetry that’s so appealing to me,” Sarkin adds that his inspiration is often derived from album covers where he often creates. His portraits and cartoon-like drawings all on record albums, are what covers his walls floor to ceiling.
Sarkin offers advice to college art students saying, “they are not willing to question the unknown.” As he recalls the place where he produces most of his art, Sarkin stresses that the inability to find that unknown place will result in failure.
His legs crossed, covered in paint and with finished pieces of art he showed off balancing on his lap, Sarkin ends the conversation reiterating the importance of failure before success as the faces he created hover over him, eyes fixed, on what seems his every move.
Image by Tacy Cresson -- Gloucester, Mass.
