Jordan Betten

Jordan Betten is an American artist whose creative career encompasses painting, sculpture and design. Betten’s art explores the ideas of urbanism, iconography, and visual story telling. Throughout his body of work there is a feeling of freedom and strength. Through his unique application and use of colors, Betten’s paintings have a visual power that resonates from the canvas. Inspired by urban settings, Betten infuses his love of the street with sophistication and modernism. He paints abstract urban environments associated with city dwelling. The depiction of street life is donethrough a combination of painted marks, oil sticks, pencils, and scraping the canvas. There are hints of figures and faces, with layers of paint obscuring and abstracting the forms.There is a raw, visceral energy to his works. The beauty, the decay, and dirt, of the city streets are reborn into a narrative of
abstract mark making and colors. His works are lyrical and chaotic, infused with a darker side behind the veil.

Working primarily on large scale paintings, Betten intentionally leaves parts of the canvas untouched while multi layering other areas. This use of negative space allows for a dialogue between the parts, what he calls “a visual breath”. The painting surfaces are layered with texture, parts with drips, thick and thin washes and pieces of oil sticks still stuck into the paint rising through
the surface.