“Watercolor is most effective when the paint is left to its own devices,” says DeKalb, Illinois-based artist Jacob van Loon (@jacobvanloon), when explaining the experience of surrendering his obsessively detailed pencil drawings to brushstrokes of watercolor. “The unpredictability of watercolor, once it comes off the brush, makes working a detailed graphite sketch both more challenging and more liberating.” The lines and edges of nearby Chicago’s cityscape strongly influence Jacob’s art, however introducing new sources of inspiration—from figurative painting to Japanese runway fashion to cartography—is central. “I don’t like to focus my attention on a specific artist or style for too long,” he says.
Jacob’s works, like his preferred mediums, are also a meditation on the imprecision of recollection. “Memories of the experiences I’ve had are far from perfect,” he says. “The imperfections of the paint play into that aspect of memory and experience.” Photo by @jacobvanloon