Jon McNair
www​.jon​mac​nair​.com
Rochester Hills, MI

Jon Mac­Nair is an illus­ta­tor liv­ing in Michi­gan. Orig­i­nally born in South Korea, Jon grew up in South East Michi­gan. He received a Bach­e­lors of Fine Arts in Illus­tra­tion from Mary­land Insti­tute Col­lege of Art.

Curbs and Stoops:  You attended the Mary­land Insti­tute Col­lege of Art in Bal­ti­more, but recently moved back to Michi­gan where you grew up. How are you lik­ing being back in Michi­gan? How does it com­pare to Bal­ti­more in terms of envi­ron­ment, art scene, and sources of inspiration?

Jon McNair:  It’s been a big change. I lived in Bal­ti­more for 8 years and being back in Michi­gan again is kind of odd. Peo­ple asked me “Why are you going there? The job mar­ket is ter­ri­ble.” Really, I am back here because of my fam­ily and to be in a place where I have a sup­port sys­tem while I fig­ure out where to go next. I’m very much in what you’d call a “tran­si­tional period.” I live in a very sub­ur­ban area at the moment and there is not much to do around here. I feel myself crav­ing the activ­ity of a larger, live­lier city. The art scene is pretty non-​existent, so I haven’t really been to any art events lately. I can’t say that I’ve been all that influ­enced or inspired by my cur­rent sur­round­ings. How­ever, if you take into con­sid­er­a­tion the type of mood your envi­ron­ment puts you in, I guess on a sub­con­scious level it’s play­ing some part in my work.

Curbs and Stoops:  Your work is highly detailed. Tell me a bit about your process. Do you do a lot of pre­lim­i­nary sketches, or do you just go for it? Your com­po­si­tions are often very com­plex, and fill the page with such grace and pre­ci­sion, is every inch preplanned?

Jon McNair: I don’t do a ton of pre­lim­i­nary work. I jot down words, phrases, and thumb­nail sketches in note­books. Usu­ally it’s just one rough thumb­nail that only I can deci­pher, or some­times no sketch at all. When I’m ready to begin the final, I’ll rough it out in pen­cil on the paper (to get it right com­po­si­tion­ally), then go back in and refine that sketch. Then I ink it or paint it. I wouldn’t say every inch is pre­planned. I find that a lot of the time I will take things out of the com­po­si­tional at a later point because I real­ize they are unnec­es­sary or there’s just too much going on.

Curbs and Stoops:  Most of your work that I’ve seen in per­son and on the inter­net, other than your graphic design work, is black and white. What is it that draws you to such a min­i­mal palette? Do you ever work in color when doing per­sonal work?

Jon McNair: Yes, I’m try­ing to intro­duce more color to my work. I recently did three works for a show over­seas that had some color in them (water­color and gouache). In the past I’ve used color quite a bit, but with the devel­op­ment of this par­tic­u­lar style and body of work, it’s been more grad­ual. I’m still try­ing to find the right mate­ri­als and palette to fit this style. I started with black and white ini­tially because I was using black ink as my main medium and wanted to get com­fort­able with that material.

Curbs and Stoops:  I read some where that you are work­ing on paint­ing more. Are your paint­ings much dif­fer­ent from you illus­tra­tion style? Is the con­tent similar?

Jon McNair:  My paint­ings (so far mostly on paper) are pretty much the same styl­is­ti­cally as my draw­ings. The con­tent is the same as well.

Curbs and Stoops:  Your images are have a haunt­ing nar­ra­tive qual­ity, almost like illus­tra­tions for über-​warped fairy­tales. Where does your inspi­ra­tion come from?

Jon McNair:  It’s a big range. Every­thing from Ger­man expres­sion­ist films to plants that I come across walk­ing in the park. I’m really into Russ­ian ani­ma­tion these days and love the work of Jan Svankma­jer. I also find a lot in inspi­ra­tion in medieval and renais­sance art, par­tic­u­larly tapes­tries and illu­mi­nated man­u­scripts. There’s a cer­tain flat­ness and awk­ward per­spec­tive in these that I enjoy.

Curbs and Stoops:  Hav­ing men­tioned that your work has a sort of fairy­tale, folk­loric vibe, are you a big reader? What are your favorite kinds of stories?

Jon McNair: I love to read, but these days I don’t have a whole lot of time to. I lis­ten to a lot of audio books though, which allow me to draw and “read” at the same time. One of my favorite writ­ers is Shirley Jack­son. She has a whole range of work, from humor­ous to ter­ri­fy­ing, with a lot of sub­tle psy­cho­log­i­cal stuff going on in her sto­ries. I enjoy end­ings that are kind of
ambigu­ous too, which she cer­tainly imple­ments in her work.

Curbs and Stoops:  You obvi­ously pos­sess a fan­tas­tic imag­i­na­tion, what are your most beloved ways to exer­cise it other than visual art?

Jon McNair:  Well, I remem­ber using my imag­i­na­tion a lot as a kid when play­ing in the back­yard or the woods. There was a lot of liv­ing room fort build­ing and stuff being made out of card­board boxes going on back then. I guess now instead of that I use my imag­i­na­tion to draw.

Curbs and Stoops:  If you could be any fic­tional char­ac­ter for a day, who would you be?

Jon McNair:  Well, if gen­der doesn’t mat­ter, I’d be Alice from Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land. That just seems like one crazy ride of a dream. I’ve read the book many, many times and lis­tened to the audio book numer­ous times too.

Curbs and Stoops:  You are an impres­sively pro­lific artist, espe­cially con­sid­er­ing the highly detailed nature of your work. Do you have a good work ethic when it comes to con­cen­trat­ing on your art? What do you do to get over the hump when you have a day where you’re feel­ing less than inspired?

Jon McNair:  I think I’ve acquired a good work ethic. I make my dead­lines and have learned to man­age my time effi­ciently over the years. I have a lot of writ­ten lists that help keep me on track with what’s next. If I’m work­ing on some­thing and it’s going well, it’s easy to stay moti­vated. It’s when things are not going well that you really need to buckle down and tell your­self to stick with it. Most of the time it works out in the end. This is prob­a­bly not the most inter­est­ing answer, but the pres­sure of dead­lines often gets me over my cre­ative hump. If it’s not a mat­ter of dead­lines, draw­ing in my sketch­book some­times helps.

Curbs and Stoops:  Finally, since we’ve now col­lab­o­rated on two shows here on the West Coast, and you’ve had other works in shows here in Port­land and else­where in the area, when will you be grac­ing us Left Coast­ers with your presence?

Jon McNair: It will hap­pen even­tu­ally. I’d love to come to Port­land and check out the city. Per­haps when I get a solo show out there on the coast I’ll make an appear­ance. Hope­fully before then though!