In Between Natural and Artificial: Jonathan Zawada's Creative Universe

We are pleased to introduce you to Jonathan Zawada, a profoundly talented artist whose illustrious career has been defined by his multidimensional approach, seamlessly blending both analog and digital techniques within the realms of art and design.

Through his artistry, he transports viewers into virtual experiences while concurrently crafting tangible works of art. Zawada's creative universe is a mesmerizing tapestry of intermingling artificial and natural objects, meticulously expressed with astonishing attention to detail, complexity, and realism. Yet, amidst the intricacy, his pieces radiate a bold and dynamic energy that captures the imagination. Drawing from his early forays into web design and programming, Zawada's artistic journey has seen him venture into commercial graphic design, illustration, and art direction. Today, he continues to push boundaries, engaging in various artistic endeavors ranging from captivating art exhibitions to captivating paintings that showcase his boundless creative vision.

Could you describe the moment or experience that led you to pursue a career in art and design? How did your early roots in web design and programming shape your artistic journey?

I had always enjoyed making things, as a young kid I always wished for things that we couldn’t afford like a Super Nintendo or posters of my favorite basketball players so I ended up making a lot of those things for myself instead. I used to make my own board game versions inspired by Mario Kart, Donkey Kong and NBA Jam and draw my own posters in oil pastels of Magic Johnson. I really wasn’t aware that there was a job called designer and I never thought I would be an artist. I became fascinated with building things on computers and in the mid-late nineties that meant making websites, using rudimentary pirated 3D software and using tools like Macromedia Flash. I sort of had a split personality for a long time, drawing and painting in my downtime and making digital work and building websites during work hours. In retrospect I think my work programming and doing web design was really just an extension of the same creative muscle that enjoys painting and drawing, in another life I might have ended up making kinetic sculptures instead but I think the appeal of digital media at the time was that it was completely free. I didn’t have much money and art supplies can be prohibitively expensive. Building a vast interactive website or piece of digital media is completely free though and also a little more immediate which satisfied my impatience.

Your work is known for its unique blend of analog and digital techniques. Can you walk us through your creative process and how you bring these different elements together in your artwork?

How and where I mix digital and analogue processes varies massively from project to project. There are long stretches where I don’t do anything more analogue than a few rough sketches to inform a digital work, and similarly there are several exhibitions which have involved works on paper which are entirely imagined and executed without any digital process. Often the digital stage comes first, as in the case of my most recent exhibition Sacrifice, An Act Of Permanence. In that case I used a variety of different software to generate landscapes directly from chromosomal data, first harvesting the data itself then transcoding the graphs into formats that could be interpreted by generative 3D tools. Once that digital sketching process is complete I then turned to recreating them in oils on canvas in a fairly direct painting process of image transferral but one which embodies all of the subjective choices required to make an image on canvas. I really don’t see them as terribly separate processes at all, its unfortunate that digital work is often trapped on a screen but I guess that is something I have been struggling with for my entire professional life, the challenge of making that ephemeral, intangible digital world manifest as something as concrete and resonant as it is in my life.

The interplay between artificial and natural objects is a prominent theme in your work. What draws you to this juxtaposition, and what do you hope to convey through these contrasts?

There is something universal about the natural world. It transcends human culture and speaks on a level that is divorced from politics and social structure while also being able to be a metaphor or analogue for those things. Everything that people have created, even the most sophisticated mathematics and engineering, pales in comparison to the depth and complexity of the natural world and as such, for me, I think it makes it an endlessly satisfying puzzle that can never really be solved. I think I can be very cynical when it comes to everything else in life but nature has to be taken on its own terms and as such I think it’s a doorway out of mental states that can be both unproductive and unhealthy.

You have worked in diverse fields such as commercial graphic design, illustration, and art direction. How do these different domains inform and influence your artistic practice?

I used to keep my commercial and personal work very clearly separated and although in recent years I have largely dissolved that distinction in the projects I work on I do think there are concerns and interests which are requirements unique to each. My artistic practice largely evolved after my commercial one so I think one of the main things I bring to my art from my work is an awareness of an audience. I don’t necessarily think that is a good thing and it’s something I wish I could ignore but at the same time I think it is a challenge that I can’t let myself let go of. I think it leads me to attempt to create work that is increasingly complex, that can work on different levels in different ways. The sacrifice there is that I’m infrequently impulsive or overly expressive which is actually the kind of work I love most from other people.

Could you share an example of a particular challenge or setback you’ve faced in your career, and how do you overcome it? What advice would you give to emerging artists who may face similar obstacles?

My whole career has been guided by opportunities rather than goals. I’m not entirely sure that has been a good thing but it has worked out okay for me so far. Both professionally and creatively I don’t often come up with a vision of what I want to achieve and then doggedly pursue that goal, instead I respond to the things that are in front of me and work within the boundaries of that opportunity, or at least only slightly outside the confines of it. I think the major challenge for any artist - and any human really - is how do you actually earn enough money to pay your bills! One way I’ve dealt with that is to live a long way from any major cities, where living is cheaper, in that way I’ve been able to silence the part of my brain that always used to limit my creativity by the financial compensation I was getting. So now, instead of thinking in terms of how many hours I can spend on a project as defined by how much I’m getting paid, I largely work on jobs until I feel they’re creatively complete - or at least until they’ve hit their delivery deadline :)

In addition to your artistic pursuits, you also engage in various activities such as art exhibitions and paintings. How do these different mediums and platforms contribute to your overall artistic vision?

Exhibitions are really the projects that I feel like are the best articulations of what I’m trying to say with my work. Working with musicians like Flume provides an opportunity to say things to a wider audience, and through media that I wouldn’t normally have access to, but the trade-off is that I don’t have any control over how that work or message is presented. Flip-flopping between those two states - commercial and non-commercial projects - does leave me frustrated sometimes as I don’t always remember to adjust my expectations accordingly but it also allows me to bring thinking from one field over to the other. There are definitely aspects of my exhibitions which have been directly informed by my experiences with commercial production techniques and in that way I think it has unbounded a lot of my thinking around my art practice. In the other direction, I think my art projects have created a desire to produce commercial work that operates on levels other than the superficial and create work that maybe has more meaning packed into it than it might otherwise.

As you continue to push the boundaries of your art, what are your future goals and aspirations? Are there any specific projects or collaborations that you are excited to pursue?

I really enjoyed taking part in the DXP exhibition at the Kanazawa 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art. For whatever reason it was one of the only times in my life that I have completed a project and immediately wanted to do more of it. The freedom and support they provided to explore my ideas felt wholly unique and I would love to be able to make more expansive, complex and detailed work like the piece I created there. I’m not sure if I’ll ever get that chance again but it was an experience that I’ll absolutely treasure.

What advice would you give to aspiring artists and designers who are looking to develop their own unique artistic style and voice? Are there any key principles or values that you believe are important to uphold in the creative process?

I’m not sure how useful any advice I would have would be, the creative and commercial environment of today is so completely different to the one I grew up in and seems to require a very different set of skills than the ones I’ve focused on. Recent developments in AI image generation have me completely questioning what it means to create art and I’ve found myself turning much more inward in the way I approach making work. It can be very hard to justify the amount of time, energy and effort you put into projects but provided you aren’t putting any expectations on the outcomes I don’t think any of that is ever lost.

A letter to your future self.

Dear Jonathan, Be grateful for all of the opportunities you’ve had and the things you’ve been able to make and stop complaining that you aren’t getting to make all the new things you wished you were!

Interview by @mirawanderlust

Images courtesy of @zawhatthe

RED•EYE WORLD

In Between Nature & Technology: Jonathan Zawada's Mesmerizing Universe