Artist: Jean Iwohara
Gallery: Dr. Maxine Merlino Gallery
Website: jeaniwohara.weebly.com
Instagram: @jelly.jean
telephone game 
dance with me 
About the Artist
Jean is an amazing artist here a LBSU. With a Bachelors of Fine Arts in illustration, Jean’s work hits close to home. She exclaimed that her work is a representation of how she is feeling. For example when she is stressed or anxious, she uses those emotions to guide her artistry. Her work showcases the realms of typography and gouache painting.
Formal Analysis
As for the formal qualities of her paintings, her creations are full of color and vibrancy. From what I experienced, her art pieces tend to be small to average sized portraits. The paintings have a smooth like texture to them as if you could feel it. More so, all her colors are straight in the sense that they are all kept within the “boundaries” of the figures she is drawing. The amount of small detail she uses in her paintings is incredible. There are many vivid primary colors that really give her work a pop of life.
Content Analysis
As mentioned above, Jean’s work correlates to her emotions she experiences throughout her daily life. She mentioned that sometimes she feels anxiety. I could be wrong, but I see how her piece, dance with me, up above represents that. One of the pipes seems to be breaking apart as if she’s breaking free from something. On the other hand, the figure in the purple shirt could be pulling her away from something she’s been excluding herself from. Such as dancing to correlate back to the title of the art piece. Her other painting, telephone game, could represent a child’s disbelief of gossip, bad news, etc. Jean verbalizes the voice of the girl with a pink dress with a dark and jagged representation. While on the other hand, the girl on the right percipience’s what she just heard with “gushy” innocence to represent joy. I understand that’s a little far out, but that’s the best way to describe the way I perceived the image.
My Experience
Being my first art gallery visit, I was pretty fascinated with the aroma an art gallery can feed off. While I was there, I resonated with the art Jean made. I enjoyed the vibrancy of her work and all the small detail. I’m not a very artsy dude, but my experience there brought out a creative side of me I haven’t felt since I was a child. So yes, past experiences do resonate their.
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