SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — La Mesa resident and artist Jason Humphrey is a regular at San Diego area art festivals. He says his love for art goes back to his youth when he was 4 years old.
"I was just always the kid that would be in his room drawing while my friends were out playing Pop Warner football or baseball. Art was always my thing."
In his teens growing up near South Central Los Angeles, Jason was into graffiti art, which unfortunately led him down a path of hanging out with gangs.
"My mom said when I was 16 she had bought me a funeral plot. Not because I was a bad kid, but because she just knew that with that environment, I was going to end up dead or in jail."
So to combat the gang life, Jason's mom encouraged him to join the Navy. Jason served 4 years in the Navy and he says the experience inspired his art and new ways to create.
"A lot of my art is actually a lot of nostalgia of places that visited when I was in the Navy ."
When Jason got out of the Navy, he was inspired to try a new style of art, pen and ink.
"Pen and ink stipple is a process of creating artwork with thousands of tiny dots. So while I was doing that I was also doing mixed media and collage, which is all hand painted pieces of watercolor paper that I hand cut."
Jason has gone from running with gangs to now creating magical works of art through his broad imagination.
"This is just like the perfect thing for me you know. I have family support and I sit in here and just create little magical worlds that people can get themselves lost in."
