Artistic INSIGHT
The Renaissance Man:
Jason Wrig
ht
By Ben Nunnally
Spend even a few minutes sitting with
him and you’ll know that he’s in it for the
art of it all; he has volumes of knowledge
tucked into his head about painting, illustration, songwriting, graphic design
- almost any medium that allows expression seems to be within reach.
“It started when I was a kid in church,” he says, talking
about the first time he started drawing. “To pass time
my mom would give me a pen and paper. I would
draw the church members, but change them into animals, Care Bears, all kinds of stuff that was big in the
80’s.”
Within a few years, he graduated to reading comic
books and picking up some of the audacious stylistic choices that came with 90’s superhero styles. He
learned to draw the female characters so well that he
ended up in a bit of trouble in school.
“I got in trouble for drawing these scantily clad women for the other kids,” he said. His parents were called
in for a parent-teacher conference, during which they
tried desperately to explain that Jason wasn’t really
up to anything untoward - he’d just found a style that
he liked.
“I was the best leg drawer in the whole fourth grade,”
he says with a laugh.
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He eventually made his way to JSU, where he spent
his undergrad years split between music and art; visual arts were a passion, but he’d received a music
scholarship for his ability to perform.
“My father is a Pentecostal preacher,” he explains.
“The pastor’s family ends up being the people that
do everything. If they needed somebody to play the
piano, you’d better learn.”
October 2013
INSIGHT