Jylian Gustlin

Jylian Gustlin is an American painter associated with the 1960s—70s San Francisco Bay Area Figurative artists, their styles, and techniques. Although using traditional painterly techniques, her vibrant paintings explore the impact of new technologies on perception. She is inspired by a lifelong love of the San Francisco Bay Area Figurative artists, mathematical theories such as the Fibonacci sequence, the resonant tones of Latin phrases, African masks, and antique Roman vessels.

Life and education
Gustlin grew up in the Bay Area. She was shaped by the technology explosion of Silicon Valley, and her art reflects her in-depth knowledge of technology. She studied mathematics and computer science at San José State University and received a BFA from the Art Academy of San Francisco where technology was emerging as an art medium. Combining her understanding of computers and her love for art, she became a graphics programmer and art director for Apple Inc.

Working at a large technology company gave Gustlin an unusual understanding of how patterns and layers on a computer screen might be reflected in actual paint layers. During the last twenty years as a full-time artist, she has designed and drawn many of her preliminary concepts on the computer. In addition to two-dimensional design, Gustlin uses three-dimensional modeling texture programs to produce character and movement of the figure through animation. With her software skills, glitch (the use of digital errors to manipulate digital information) and data visualization software, she creates new directions and accidental meetings of shapes, forms, and color.

Figurative paintings
Figurative paintings have been Gustlin's love for her entire life. As a child, she drew paper dolls and their colorful clothes for herself and her friends; dolls in endless combinations and colors. While consistently drawing figures, she explored the human body—the choreography of the limbs and body in a fluid motion. Today, she uses the colors to create emotions on the abstracted figures, leaving the interpretation of the painting to the viewer.

Within many layers and textures, Gustlin questions, “How do we shape who we are? How do we construct our individual and societal identities? And how do we transform our anonymous lives into a moment where we are living in harmony?”

In Gustlin's paintings, the human body emerges from the background and moves through emotions. The rich patterns of shapes and colors bring the figures to life and challenges the viewer's imagination. The layers of paint and interwoven color is the beauty and explosive atmosphere Gustlin brings to the human body. The moody, yet qualitative, emotions are expressed in her paintings as they emerge into the foreground, bringing the complex, layered textures of the figure into our space as we sense its presence and feelings.

Gustlin's abstracted figures present non-verbal language, leaving the viewer to experience the painting, gathering their own information. "The figurative characters are frequently set in an alien-like landscape, temperamental and ominous, yet simultaneously depicting a sense of future self reflection." Gustlin wants the viewer to pull back and view what is happening with the body in the space of the canvas. The body poses are meant to be thought thought-provoking and inspirational, creating different viewer experiences. “Gustlin continues to amaze us with her strength in a variety of subject matter. Very rarely is an artist accomplished in both figurative and abstract styles — and as well regarded for tackling both.”

Gustlin's figures are created with overly exaggerated long legs and large feet, because she believes it grounds the figures to the earth, like a tree growing long and tall, but always with roots attached to the ground. The stances represent the stories people carry in their bodies and let the viewer interpret the movement in the painting. "The sketchy quality of her figures and heavy drips of pigment allows the viewer to better experience the hand of this artist, as she attacks her surfaces with a savvy guilelessness and assured fluidity." The colors in her work come from the palate of nature. The hours she spends trail running in the mountains gives her inspiration from the colors of wildflowers, hillsides, redwood trees jutting into the blue skies, and the deep blues of the shadows.

Fibonacci
Gustlin is shaped by technology at her fingertips and her art reflects the in-depth knowledge of technological manipulation. Figures have always been an important part and the foundation of her art; however, she also creates abstract paintings with Fibonacci sequence numbers producing complex and layered paintings.

Approaching the figures from a mathematical and an emotional perspective, she incorporates the golden ratio, giving the finished piece the dynamic purity of expression.

She explores the relationship of Fibonacci numbers and how it intersects with the arts in every new design. However, when painting, free expression and personal experiences flow through the paintbrush and directly onto the canvas. One piece from the series "is layered with hundreds of paints, archival and metallic papers, and other mixed media...[and] is based on shapes created by the ascending mathematical pattern known as the Fibonacci sequence".

Entropy
The “Entropy” series began as she was exploring different types of mathematical equations and was heavily influenced by the word entropy, the literal meaning of which is: “life flows from low to high.”. While trail running, she observed the chaos in the forest and created designs in her mind. In her studio, she used that chaos of ideas and the reality of the landscape in the adaptions of her entropy paintings. She worked "with two-part epoxy resin, oil and acrylic paints, charcoal, wax, gold leaf, pastel and graphite on board". The series explores nature; the ever-changing environment from calm to chaos in a moment.

The “Fibonacci” series explores the structure of the world through mathematics—the calculated sequence of events. When uniting the figurative, “Fibonacci” and “Entropy” series, they become intertwined as she applies paints, colors, and lines. Gustlin perceives the world as interconnected and seamlessly designed, providing her ideas for the three series.

Exhibitions and collections
Jylian Gustlin's work has been shown in multiple solo and group exhibitions in New York, Boston, San Francisco, Seattle, Colorado, San Diego, Hawaii, and British Columbia as well as others.

She was featured, along with quilts from Gee's Bend in the San Juan Islands Museum show: Conversations with Gee's Bend (2018). Gustlin was sponsored by Adobe corporations for her work in Heart of San Francisco (2004), creating one of the large sculpture hearts found around the city of San Francisco.


 * Stratera, Gallery Mar, Park City, CO, 2018
 * Jylian New Works, Canfin Gallery, Tarry Town, NY, 2016
 * Multiplicity, Jules Place Gallery, Boston, MA, 2015
 * Jylian, Canfin Gallery, Tarry Town, NY, 2013
 * Group Exhibition, Forre Fine Art Gallery, Aspen, CO 2012
 * Humanity, Brett Wesley Gallery, Las Vegas, NV, 2011
 * Caper, Jest, Revel & Stomp, SOPA Fine Arts, Kelowna BC, 2011
 * Females on Figure, Madison Gallery, La Jolla, CA, 2011
 * Luscious Visions, Jules Place Gallery, Boston, MA, 2010>
 * Fibonacci, Oracle, San Francisco, CA, 2008
 * Gifted, SOPA Fine Arts, Kelowna BC, 2007
 * Aeris, HANG, San Francisco, CA, 2007
 * Two Woman Show, Stricoff Gallery, NY, 2007
 * MC2 Collection, San Francisco, CA, 2003
 * Francisco Partners Collection, San Francisco, CA 2001 – 2004
 * Sunset Magazine Idea House, Palo Alto, CA 2002
 * Big Deal Visual Aid, San Francisco, CA annually 1992 – 2003
 * Group Exhibition Adobe Corporation Gallery, San Jose, CA 1997

Gustlin's work is in the collections of Saatchi Stanford Medical Center (California), Norges Geotenkniske Institutt (Norway), Visa Headquarters (San Francisco), Oracle Headquarters (California), MERE Hotel (Canada), Gaslamp Hilton Suites (San Diego), Wyndham Orlando Resort (Florida), Morgan Hill Library (California), Spaulding Hospital (Massachusetts), Eilan Hotel and Spa (Texas), and One Empire Pass (Utah).

She is represented by several galleries including Gallery Mar in Park City and Carmel and Canfin Gallery in New York.

Personal life
Activist, singer, and friend of Gustlin, Joan Baez wrote, “I am fortunate enough to have Jylian as a friend. I know her as exuberant, open, fun, funny, teasing, stubborn to the point of bullheadedness, and as a splendidly free spirit. She has psychic tendencies, drives like a maniac, and runs in the hills for hours on end, fair weather and foul. It is that same energy which directs her hands and body to paint. My guess is the actual painting is executed in the same trance she experiences as a runner. The results are expansive, like the hills, with the colors instinctively finding their place in the grand picture. She creates what I believe is “fine art.” She has been present to help me, a beginner, find ways to hurdle over stuck points, and struggle with her suggestion to “make as many mistakes as you can.”If that is the same as “take as many risks as you can,” it blends like a perfect palette with the rest of her life style, and the viewer is the beneficiary of the whole package.”