Jylian Gustlin is an American painter associated with the 1960s—70s San Francisco Bay Area Figurative artists, their styles, and techniques. Although using traditional painterly techniques, her vibrant paintings explore the impact of new technologies on perception. She is inspired by a lifelong love of the San Francisco Bay Area Figurative artists, mathematical theories such as the Fibonacci sequence, the resonant tones of Latin phrases, African masks, and antique Roman vessels.
Life and education
Gustlin grew up in the Bay Area. She was shaped by the technology explosion of Silicon Valley, and her art reflects her in-depth knowledge of technology. She studied mathematics and computer science at San José State University and received a BFA from the Art Academy of San Francisco where technology was emerging as an art medium. Combining her understanding of computers and her love for art, she became a graphics programmer and art director for Apple Inc.
Working at a large technology company gave Gustlin an unusual understanding of how patterns and layers on a computer screen might be reflected in actual paint layers. During the last twenty years as a full-time artist, she has designed and drawn many of her preliminary concepts on the computer. In addition to two-dimensional design, Gustlin uses three-dimensional modeling texture programs to produce character and movement of the figure through animation. With her software skills, glitch (the use of digital errors to manipulate digital information) and data visualization software, she creates new directions and accidental meetings of shapes, forms, and color.
Art work
Figurative paintings
Figurative paintings have been Gustlin's love for her entire life. As a child, she drew paper dolls and their colorful clothes for herself and her friends; dolls in endless combinations and colors. While consistently drawing figures, she explored the human body—the choreography of the limbs and body in a fluid motion. Today, she uses the colors to create emotions on the abstracted figures, leaving the interpretation of the painting to the viewer.
Within many layers and textures, Gustlin questions, “How do we shape who we are? How do we construct our individual and societal identities? And how do we transform our anonymous lives into a moment where we are living in harmony?”
In Gustlin's paintings, the human body emerges from the background and moves through emotions. The rich patterns of shapes and colors bring the figures to life and challenges the viewer's imagination. The layers of paint and interwoven color is the beauty and explosive atmosphere Gustlin brings to the human body. The moody, yet qualitative, emotions are expressed in her paintings as they emerge into the foreground, bringing the complex, layered textures of the figure into our space as we sense its presence and feelings.
Gustlin's abstracted figures present non-verbal language, leaving the viewer to experience the painting, gathering their own information. "The figurative characters are frequently set in an alien-like landscape, temperamental and ominous, yet simultaneously depicting a sense of future self reflection." Gustlin wants the viewer to pull back and view what is happening with the body in the space of the canvas. The body poses are meant to be thought thought-provoking and inspirational, creating different viewer experiences. “Gustlin continues to amaze us with her strength in a variety of subject matter. Very rarely is an artist accomplished in both figurative and abstract styles — and as well regarded for tackling both.”
Gustlin's figures are created with overly exaggerated long legs and large feet, because she believes it grounds the figures to the earth, like a tree growing long and tall, but always with roots attached to the ground. The stances represent the stories people carry in their bodies and let the viewer interpret the movement in the painting. "The sketchy quality of her figures and heavy drips of pigment allows the viewer to better experience the hand of this artist, as she attacks her surfaces with a savvy guilelessness and assured fluidity." The colors in her work come from the palate of nature. The hours she spends trail running in the mountains gives her inspiration from the colors of wildflowers, hillsides, redwood trees jutting into the blue skies, and the deep blues of the shadows.