Artist Jake Dement in his element on the living room floor of his Bossier City home surrounded by his paints and canvases. (Jessica Leigh/The Times)
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The 26-year-old artist says he stops and smells the roses more often these days after taking a good, hard look at mortality.
The Bossier City resident lives with a muscular condition from blood poisoning that has been a source of body pain and headaches for the past six years. The pain used to manifest itself negatively in his paintings until his uncle, David Dement, pointed out that his work focused too heavily on the negative aspects of life.
A self-described abstract surrealist, Dement uses his dreams, emotions and spirituality to inform his brightly colored acrylic works on canvas. His work hangs in an exhibit titled "Drops of Wisdom" at Prima Tazza, 8835 Line Ave., through Sept. 9.
QUESTION: When did you get serious about art?
ANSWER: What really made me focus and get serious with what I was doing was when my cousin Marcus Sterling Dement, I would call him my brother, maybe my twin even because we looked a lot alike, passed away from cancer in the summer of 1999.
Q: What kind of an impact did that have on you?
A: We're only here for a second. It's like a spark. You light a match and then it goes out and there's your whole life right there. Marcus was like a bonfire and he went out. In the scheme of eternity, which is the way I look at things, we're only here for a second. It was a big awakening when I watched them lower his coffin in the ground. Something in me came out.
Q: Where do you get your ideas for your paintings?
A: Half of my paintings I've seen in my dreams. The other is emotion. A lot of times without making a sketch or without doing anything, I'm just sitting down on the floor with 50 different colors of paint and just feeling what I'm feeling and just attacking the canvas. Some of the best work I've done, I've done that way.
Q: How do you paint?
A: I won't use paintbrushes a lot of times. I've used my hands, blow dryers, razor blades, pencils and erasers, to give off different textures. The thing about art is that there's no rules, and that's what I love about it. You can do whatever you want and it's still going to be OK.
Q: Tell me about your muscular condition.
A: The doctors found out recently through testing that I had an allergic reaction. I was more or less poisoned from a tattoo that I have. It's lead and cadmium from the ink that can sink into your skin, but only with people that grew up really sick. I was in the hospital a lot as a child and had to use a breathing machine at night and get allergy shots in the day.
Q: What subject matter do you paint?
A: A lot of pain, a lot of happiness, a lot of misunderstanding, confusion, beauty. I love to paint things that I find beautiful. That's therapeutic. For the longest time, I was always painting things that made me mad, sad, depressed.
Q: Does pain still influence your work?
A: Sometimes, honestly, I'll fall into self pity and I'll let it get the best of me. But I still do become inspired through pain. But I can say 'OK, you've got a bad muscular problem, why don't you look at things a little differently?' That's when I felt my spirituality was awoken, and that's the biggest tool I use when I paint.
Q: Do you have any other passions?
A: I love to box. It's the adrenaline -- I'm an adrenaline junkie. If there's a cliff, I'm going to jump off it. When I was really sick, I got myself in shape physically. I was in pain, but I started boxing from 2001 to 2004. My father was an Olympic boxer.
Q: Do you still box?
A: I stopped. I kept getting my nose broken. Honestly, though, whenever I get in the ring, I always feel nothing except adrenaline. I couldn't even feel the pain.
Q: What's the creative process like?
A: I actually feel like I step out of myself and I'll find myself exhausted like I just did the Tour de France after it's over. I'm just worn out because it's so much emotion. That's my palette of colors. They are emotions. All of that sounds so deep and cheesy, but it's true. I dig into my own emotions to pull out paintings.
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