The Verve: Canvas offers relief for colorful artist
Philip Arnzen-Jones might be considered a beatnik.
A fan of Jack Kerouac, Hunter Thompson, Kurt Vonnegut and Charles Bukowski, Arnzen-Jones doesn’t leave home without some sort of creative instrument – a guitar, markers or sidewalk chalk.
He has created hundreds of drawings, paintings and poems, without restraint.
“I’m kind of obsessive. Manic even,” he said. “It’s my therapy. I have an obsessive compulsive disorder, anxiety, and I’m bipolar. Creating really helps.”
Arnzen-Jones, 28, was born in Western Washington and moved to the Spokane area in his early teens. He graduated from Shadle Park High School where he focused on English and Japanese. He thought he might be a writer. He attended Spokane Falls Community College but dropped out after one semester after his daughter was born.
At 20, he began painting in earnest to still his thoughts. “Art for me is an escape from the uncomfortable anxiety that brews inside me; the uncomfortable situations of everyday life and my worries and tribulations are erased from my eyes,” he said. “With an open mind, I create my own world momentarily to live in. It’s a sporadic spilling of memories and dreams, from my fingertips to the medium. Subtly to say art keeps me alive, I have a moment of relief.”
His work, done in pastels, markers or acrylic paint on canvas or wood is reminiscent of the 1960s psychedelic movement, with colors and shapes that urge a viewer to look deeper and perhaps find Waldo. They are doodles that seem to go on forever, geometric shapes like manic crop circles, many layers of swirling color, or simple representations of fantasy driven characters.
Inspired by Vincent Van Gogh, Salvador Dali, and Aztec and Mayan art, Arnzen-Jones has no fear of color or patterns; he simply communicates. Ever the poet, he said, “I dwell within each of my artistic creations, painting with my pupils as my hands follow suit with a marker or paintbrush.”
Like beatniks of the past, Arnzen-Jones follows his own path: earning money by legally growing marijuana and spending much of his time working through his disorders on his guitar or painting and drawing which he does daily.
“The taste for creation is unsatisfiable to me,” he poetically explained. “When the canvas is at my hands, I melt through the surface of the Earth and drift aimlessly in the sedimentary layer.”
He has shown his work sparingly at businesses and outdoor festivals and sells well through word-of-mouth. He keeps his prices low so his pieces will sell more easily and to make room for more work. Through June, some of Arnzen-Jones’ work will hang alongside a dozen others at the Satellite Diner, 425 W. Sprague Ave.