About

Jack Avetisyan is a contemporary painter currently living and working in Los Angeles, CA. although he was born in Armenia when it was part of the Soviet Union. He started attending art classes at the age of 5, with his earliest influences coming from Soviet and Armenian animations. Moving to Los Angeles when he was 9, his new influences became American cartoons and comics, and he adopted a whimsical style that is still referenced in his work today. Jack’s academic training in drawing and painting continued here in SoCal, as did the accolades and prizes for his innate talent, resulting in his first art sale at the age of 16 to an Armenian collector. These early influences and his formal training have created a unique style of artwork that blurs the line between high art and low art, and combines the representational with abstraction.

The figures in his artwork are distorted and stylized, sometimes remaining in sketch-like quality, similar to a cartoon or comic strip, but at other times are highly rendered. The characters in his work have very distinct identities – often appearing as business people, worldly young adults, or old-school sophisticates. They are self-satisfied, and reeking of financial and social success, but sometimes hanging in limbo, in the midst of existential crisis. Their situation and storyline are ambiguous, and left to the viewer to determine, resulting in work that draws the viewer in for closer inspection.

Jack holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree with honors from Otis College of Art and Design. He is also the recipient of a Jay Chiat Scholarship. Since graduating from Otis, Jack has worked in gaming, consumer products, and marketing & advertising as Designer and Art Director. At the end of 2016, after working only commercially for 10 years, Jack decided to return to his first love of creating art. A year later he had created a substantial body of work that was presented in a solo show at Armenian Arts Gallery in Glendale. Since then Jack has participated in numerous juried group exhibitions, art fairs, and has received awards and positive reviews from art critics and multiple curators. His work is internationally collected in personal and corporate collections.