Jack Carden

Assignment Brief: Write a ‘profile’ story on a person of your choice (excluded are family members and friends), suitable for a magazine publication. Include an appropriate photo you have taken (you will not be marked on the photo itself). The feature could focus on an interesting aspect, experience or moment of their life. It should include information, insight, ‘colour’ and description and must contain several quotations gathered via a face to face interview.

I chose to interview Jack Carden because having done an art course for 4 years, his style particularly stood out to me. The ability to create the art he does with just a pen completely changed my perspective of how simple things can make big impressions. The concept of finding beauty in chaos fit with his concept of anti-art. Not particularly welcomed in the art society, he continues to pursue his career, going outside the “norm” of what we perceive as art. His capability to take controversial opinions and turn that into art, is another aspect that drew me to interview him.

The Boy Who Redefined Art By Destroying It

“It’s just the idea that I take pre-existing artworks and “destroy” them.”  

Jack Carden, 20, an artist known to most as the “boy who destroys art” began his journey with a lucky coincidence.  A natural talent unnoticed even by himself, he never believed that he would pursue art until an issue in his last year of high school changed the trajectory of his career. When asked about his past and if he believed he’d ever be an artist, Jack responded “I never really enjoyed art as a kid, I always thought the idea of, you have to perfect your painting, you have to create some hyper-realistic artworks was something that was really quite daunting to me and so I really sort of, put off being creative.”

For him, the University of Oxford was his dream, and his goal was to do astrophysics. He wanted to take chemistry and physics, be on a science-focused path, but couldn’t take both in his last year of school. He dropped chemistry and in the spur of the moment chose art. So, what changed about art for him? What made him enjoy art after being put off by it for decades? “I was reading a book about Basquiat, a New York Street artist and found an approach to art where you can draw about your emotions, and your feelings,” he said. For years he considered art to be those hyper-realistic images that someone draws, and now he dove into it, thinking about his childhood, his experiences. “Instead of just focusing on what I was creating, [I started] focusing more on the passion and the emotions involved.”

Through his following of 90.4k on Instagram and 635.0k on Tiktok today, Jack shares his art with the world, that many find controversial. The concept of anti-art that has been attached to his work, truly defines his style, “It’s more about the actual reaction to the art, it’s the way people get angered by it and riled up by it” he said. Art today is perceived by the positive reaction one gets when we look at it, but he breaks those boundaries and stereotypes by pursuing an art form not many dare to try.

When I asked him how he deals with the negative feedback from pursuing an art form of such and having a platform on Tiktok that is bound to have a toxic environment, like cancel culture, he took a pause and answered, “At first it really got to me, I remember there was a TikTok I posted maybe a year ago now, and it just started getting tons of debates […] it became a trend, it became viral to just shit on my art […] but I’ve always had that ethos that I’d much rather someone really hate my art than where they’re completely indifferent to it.”

To be an artist, you need inspiration, you need the ability to create new pieces and you must practice to get better. Taking a closer look into Jack’s creative process, he says “a lot of it is the environment around me, at my mum’s house, there’s a lot of shit in the garden, books, skulls and a lot of just sort of inspiring things around me.” Be it his mother’s paintings or an old family history book, a podcast, or a beat in a song that gets his gears turning, Jack surrounds himself with objects that inspire and goes into a space with no technology to disturb his creative process.

“Sometimes it takes 10-20 hours to come up with an idea in the first place.” This gets us thinking that where does he get the motivation to continue if the process is so rigorous? To which his response was, “definitely being on the internet, the element of wanting to continue to grow my portfolio and for my audience, there are fans I have, who enjoy seeing my art and that is a huge motivation for me, to keep making art for people.” Once he set his mind, Jack told himself “I’m going to be an artist, I’m not going to become a struggling artist” and he continues to work towards that goal today.

With a shift towards the digital world, one assumes if the traditional art culture will survive. Will artists still want to make canvas paintings, or will they move their work on a digital platform? Though Jack considers himself a traditional artist where he would like his audience to connect with his work physically in galleries, he dabbles in the digital art culture as well, with NFTs, app icons, trying to create a balance between them but firmly states, “There will never be a day that I’ll completely shift to digital [artwork] at all.”

Being an artist was a dream he never envisioned but it was meant to be, “I definitely think that if I hadn’t chosen to do art, I wouldn’t be doing art at all, if I hadn’t had that sort of lucky coincidence.”

interview conducted online via zoom

DK