This combination of video art and live painting is my representation of Parallax. I’ll be projecting a prepared video that travels through New York City onto a blank canvas and tracing the images. The resulting canvas will be hundreds of layers of images of the city superimposed on each other. The traveling shot in the video will have a common horizon line- the camera will remain at the same height above the ground and look straight ahead. This will give the image a cohesive space. Since the painting is an improvised performance piece, I can’t predict exactly what it will look like. But my hope is that it will be so complex that the viewer will forget about windows and buildings and streets and think only about time and space in perspective.
Jake Nelson was born and raised in Oregon and went to film school in Los Angeles. He moved to New York in pursuit of creative freedom and started bringing his stories to life in the form of oil on canvas. While working as a freelance storyboard artist for advertising, he built up a body of paintings and showed in several galleries including the Dorian Grey Gallery in the East Village. He explores the synthesis of music and visual art by performing live paintings on stage at venues all across NYC including 92Y Tribeca, Highline Ballroom and Bowery Electric. Combining his love of painting and film, he found the true innovator’s medium: animation. His collaboration with Cem Kurtulus – “The Hungry Boy” – has toured the world’s animation festivals. Jake currently works in visual effects for feature films and directs music videos on his nights and weekends.