Jair Piñeros is an Art of Austin artist!
Jair Piñeros
AoA – How long have you been in Austin and how did you get into art?
Jair – A little more than 2 years ago. I came to Austin 3 years ago to work for GM doing software automation and testing, and after 6 months or so of working there I realized that my life was turning into a routine of waking up, going to work, coming home cooking, and scrolling thru Instagram and reddit. So I decided I needed something else to focus on and that’s when I picked up the trumpet! And now it is my life! Jk actually I enjoyed it, but turns out I suck at it, hahahaha. After I put down the trumpet, I started doing some ink portraits (and sometimes ink and watercolor that’s where Piñeros comes from) on redditgetsdrawn one day a one of the people I drew said I should start an Instagram account and the rest is history.
AoA – When did you realize that you were an artist?
Jair – To be honest, I had the hardest time calling myself an artist before. I had a rigid, and quite ignorant idea of what being an artist meant. It really wasn’t until I had the opportunity of showing a piece on the last EAST Tour that I felt a bit more comfortable calling myself an artist.
AoA – Can you speak to your art training?
Jair – I got zero traditional art training. I never went to school for it or took any classes, but I’ve been drawing/painting almost everyday for over 2 years now so I guess that’s kind of a training.
AoA – Where do you find inspiration?
Jair – Everywhere! I love doing portraits so wherever a face appears I can draw inspiration from. I draw inspiration from movies, books, other artists, people I see in the street, people I know, even dreams.
AoA – What is your work concerned with?
Jair – I mainly focus on stuff I love and stuff I hate. I’m fascinated by the human figure and I completely abhor censorship, especially against women. So that’s a common thread in my work.
AoA – What are your preferred medium(s)?
Jair – I don’t have a strong preference. I love ink since that’s where I started but I also love digital… I feel that the freedom and forgiveness of working digitally helped me advance as an artist greatly. I also work on acrylics and recently I started working on oils which I’m loving. Working with oils feels almost as working digitally (maybe I’m just using them wrong but I’m loving it).
I also do some sculpting and like everything else I love it.
I think it probably is easier to say what’s my least favorite one… watercolors, they are so unforgiving that’s frustrating. I feel as an artist that is just finding his/her/their voice dealing with such an unforgiving medium is just going to hinder your progress. (I did some watercolor and to this day I think the best use of watercolor in my art is to put accents to my ink works)
AoA – Do you have any feelings towards Digital Art versus traditional mediums?
Jair – I feel that both are important, or at least both have been really important on helping me improve my art technically and conceptually.
AoA – Who are some artists that you look to?
Jair – Nicolás Uribe, Nicolás V Sanches, Guillermo Lorca García, Karen Offutt, Sandra Chevrier
AoA – If you could own 1 piece from a living artist, who would it be?
Jair – Nicolás Uribe or Sandra Chevrier
AoA – What else do you enjoy besides making art?
Jair – Reading, which I’m doing a lot of now because of COVID, traveling which ain’t happening any time soon, and I’m kind of a personal finance geek… I think I was a financial advisor in another life… I still find it weird that people in the US are more willing to talk about their sex lives openly but finances is such a taboo topic. I don’t know, maybe if we all talked about it more people would know more and stop making awful mistakes that are preventable.
AoA – We almost hate to ask because that’s all we hear about these days, but how have you had to adapt as an artist to the current Covid-19 pandemic? Where can we currently find your work?
Jair – Not really… I still do most of my art at home. The subjects I tackle didn’t change that much other than, like most of us, I did some COVID related art. I think it is important to bring up current and important events in your art. Although I feel like Covid did throw a wrench in my live painting career. I got to do one ATX Block Party and I was ready for the next one when all this happened… and now I don’t even know where or how to get back there when all this ends.
And for now y’all can find my art at my Instagram page about 90% of what I do is there the other 10% are some private commissions and stuff that I don’t feel like showing the rest of the world.
AoA – What advice would you give all the artists reading out there?
Jair – Keep doing art because you never know who you will inspire… I remember the moment I was in a museum in Berlin (Urban Nation) and I saw some works of Sandra and at that moment I thought to myself I want to create something as beautiful and powerful as her portraits and I haven’t stop trying since then.
Connect with Jair!