Meet Jonathan Blackburn, Ventura’s Visual Artist of the Year. As a commercial digital artist for over 10 years, Blackburn has focused his body of work in Multimedia/Web/Graphic/Print and Brand Design. His designs combine photography, custom Photoshop brush design blending and implement traditional painting, pop-art, mixed media and street art mediums that are transformed to create colorful, wild and vivid collage-style expressions. “I was exceptionally interested in music and the arts and spent most of my teenage years drawing, writing and drumming for bands to express ideas that were trapped up waiting to find a voice. Maybe that’s why you see me incorporating so many ideas, collages and wild color explorations in my art,” says Blackburn.
Aside from winning the Ventura RAW Visual Artist of the Year, Blackburn was the top runner up in the 2011 Chicago Fringe Festival Logo Design Contest, as well as a 2nd place in the 2011 Ventura County Fair’s Professional Arts Dept Design Competition (Digital Arts Division).
“It’s humbling and it really means the world to me to have the exposure and placement that I have had through RAW Showcasing,” says Blackburn. “The Networking, branching out to new cities and the pleasure of being a part of something that you can share your story with others makes me grateful.”
Moving forward, Blackburn has some new ideas in the works, “I have been entertaining the notion to create new and interesting 3 dimensional pieces based off of my original artwork and incorporate free-floating metal frames or wall hangings that connect 4″x4″ squares of the entire piece into an “exploded view” sculpture.” He is also participating in a few professional gallery showcases in the coming year.
Blackburn’s professional portfolio can be found at: jonblackburn.sqsp.com
As well as his company profile and online digital community: www.Darklineink.com