Painfully accurate, the notion that our uniqueness could be reduced to 16 distinctive personas was somewhat shocking and stuck with the young Kinsella to this day, feeding his interest in the “self” and what defines it. The whole idea of creating a family album of different personalities stems from a very early age when the artist’s mother gifted him a book, Please Understand Me, which used Carl Jung’s psychological classification theory to enable readers to determine which one of the 16 existing character types they are. That’s a very liberating thing for both me and the viewer.” - Jason Boyd Kinsella In my art it’s the complete opposite – it’s successful if everyone walks away feeling something different. “For many years I worked in advertising, where the singular purpose of creativity was to lead everyone to the same conclusion about what they had just seen.
#Psychological portraiture software
With the purposefully obvious use of technology and 3D rendering software in Kinsella’s creative process, the reference to interconnectivity between the natural and the artificial becomes even more relevant and somewhat personified. It is this focused interest in the human psyche that resulted in Kinsella’s work being labeled as hyper-contemporary psychological portraiture, allowing him to create an endless amount of assemblages which symbolise the endless combinations of character traits we are all built from. These geometric fragments, which the Canadian artist uses as building blocks to represent the complexity of the human condition, simultaneously evoke our reliance on digital technology and its influence on our psyche. Everyone is unique like a psychological fingerprint.”Ī quick glance at Jason Boyd Kinsella’s works deciphers the familiar form of a human figure, which then instantly dismantles into an amalgamation of flawless, colourful and otherworldly shapes that construct the initial mirage. In this sense, Kinsella intuitively explores each of his subjects from the inside out, creating uniquely accurate portraits of friends, acquaintances and strangers in his own distinctive visual language. Softer and rounder edges come together to convey more gentle attributes, whereas strong lines and sharp corners communicate harder personalities. For Kinsella, these raw materials do not mean much on their own, but together they begin to interconnect, uniting to form singular relationships. The varying shapes, colours and sizes of these blocks are specific to each portrait and interlock in a multitude of different ways. Reflecting these notions, Kinsella’s striking portraits reduce each sitter to distinct building blocks. From this, the artist discovered a new lens through which to see people. He soon came to realise that it is the unique way in which these modular traits are organised that constitutes our individual natures. In this sense, Kinsella’s artworks liberate viewers to form their own varied and personal conclusions.įrom a young age, Kinsella became fascinated by our individual psychological makeup, developing a keen interest in the Myers-Briggs personality test that is designed to break down our characters to specific sets of traits. However, where the singular purpose of the creative energy in advertising is to lead people to the same conclusion, Kinsella’s artistic work strives towards the opposite goal, encouraging and stimulating subjectivity. In this way, Kinsella’s experience in advertising has fed his current artistic practice, leading him to develop his theory of psychological portraiture. As such, Kinsella is perhaps uniquely positioned to visualise the intricacies of our individual psychological components. For the artist, the realms of advertising and psychology converge, with psychology exploring human nature and advertising leveraging psychology to understand human behaviour. Kinsella transitioned to a career in painting after a diverse and lengthy experience in the creative industry, working in the art world and in advertising. The idea of psychological portraiture is central to Jason Boyd Kinsella’s artistic practice and lies at the very heart of Fragments, the artist’s first solo exhibition in London.