Jonni Cheatwood

Jonni Cheatwood (born July 21, 1986, Thousand Oaks, California) is a Brazilian-American visual artist working across many different disciplines including painting, photography, graphic design and fashion. His main body of work operates in the gap between abstract expressionism, surrealism and conceptual art experimenting with various genres and techniques in his work. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles.^[1]

Early Life & Education

Cheatwood was born and raised in Thousand Oaks, California, a suburb in the northwestern part of the Greater Los Angeles area. He attended Simi Valley High School, Oaks Christian School and graduated from Westlake High School in 2004. He would leave southern California after graduation to attend Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona and then in 2006, he transferred to Arizona State University. While attending ASU, Cheatwood began to paint.

Cheatwood graduated from Arizona State University in 2011 with a Bachelor's in Secondary Education and Film & Media Production.^[2]

Work

The bulk of Jonni's work incorporates photographs, generally self-portraits of himself. He uses those images as a canvas to drip paint onto and calls these portraits "drippies." Cheatwood’s large-scale abstract paintings, which he calls "scumbags," imply movement and chaos that consist of sewn together canvasses, denim, bedsheets and serape rugs that often incorporate fragments of text from poetry, shoe prints, coffee and debris such as dust and dirt. ^[3]

In 2012, Cheatwood was a semi-finalist in The Next Artspace Artist competition, which was put on in collaboration with Artspace and Tumblr. Following that competition, this series was featured in the third issue of Fashion for Men magazine by Milan Vukmirovic, Ignant.de, Trendland and FFFFOUND! ^[1][4][5]

He has also frequently collaborated with designer Jeremy Fall. Cheatwood has painted on garments for Fall, juxtaposing fine art and fashion, as well as lending his artwork to make the look book for Fall's brand.^{[6] [7][8]} The pair have also collaborated on a series of Woodstock inspired posters promoting the 2014 Coachella festival, which were featured by Lindsay Lohan on her official website.^[9][10]

Cheatwood also created the artwork for Kitty Cash's Love the Free, Volume 2 mixtape and his work can be seen in Usher's music video, She Came to Give It to You.^[11][12]

References