Artist Bio
Emerging artist Janjan Day was born and raised in Oahu, Hawaii as first generation Filipino American. She explores themes of nostalgia, ecofeminism and duality within herself, expressed through images of femme identities and nature.
Early on, Hawaii’s local flora and fauna has heavily inspired her works of nostalgia, reconnecting back to her childhood. Over time, their work incorporates various patterns inspired by batok tattoos, polynesian tattoos, paisley patterns into her ecofeminist works, sparking conversations of climate change. Currently, she has been inspired by cybersigilism tattoos to incorporate themes of duality within oneself, conflicted between the world of post-industrialism with its modern technology and the agrarian world with its preservation of nature.
Janjan’s art education experience is unique: from childhood to adolescence she was highly invested in their art classes in school, learning basic skills from her art teachers in elementary school and middle school, later on abandoning art for a different career path. It wasn’t until her young adult years she returned to art as a way to navigate mental health, and has been a self taught artist ever since.
Since 2024, she has done live art and gallery walks at art events located in Nevada, and festivals in California and Oregon. They also appeared in themed art gallery exhibitions hosted by Makers Paradise, and Sierra Arts Foundation and have done public art mural paintings in Virginia City and Carson City.
Aside from being a professional artist, she aims to become an accredited art therapist. Art has largely impacted Janjan, in terms of improving her mental wellbeing. She hopes to encourage others the same path, to transform pain into art. She believes in using the creative process to alchemize emotions, transmuting them onto a canvas in order to understand oneself.
My Statement
I believe in approaching the canvas the same way we approach life: letting go of control and letting intuition take over. Painting, to me, became one of the best ways to help me heal from my PTSD but also a crucial routine in regulating my nervous system. My outlook of life has always been emotion led, and often I turn to sketches and painting to understand myself better but to also rid myself of the so-called, “brain rot” from consuming modern day technology we Gen Z people use everyday for social media.
Intention to play and being whimsical has always been the start of every creative project and I tend to channel this by playing music before I start. It wasn’t until I started playing around with paint that my artistic vision would come to me, and soon I would pull these images out of the subconscious onto the canvas.
In my work, I have much love for color and so very rarely does my art ever use a greyscale palette unless it was charcoal and paper. My deep love for nature, astronomy, various mythological cultures and esoteric knowledge have always been integrated in my works. The combinations of things I have loved along with the curvature and shapes of feminine figures have formed a world of my own, and I love to play in these worlds.
Acrylic paint is not the only medium I’ve played around with. I’ve explored and enjoyed watercolors, gouache, textural paintings, clay, and mixed media, and I learned more about my own creative process in each of these mediums. My creativity often becomes a temporary ‘escape’ from the real world, but that small sliver of escapism during my creative process soon enough reveals another perception of how I view the world, in turn, deepening the relationship with myself. If I would find a way to love myself, I wouldn’t want it any other way than to paint my heart away.