By day, Jaya Brees spends his working hours at a small tool & die shop operating CNC machines. Metal shavings litter the floor, and a constant buzzing sounds in the air. It’s one of the many nondescript buildings that all fade together when riding north on 124th Street through Butler’s industrial drag.
Running machines day in and day out isn’t exactly a passion of his – it’s more of a means to an end. Being a machinist puts money in his pocket, helping him pay his bills, including a special medication for his dog. Being an up-and-coming artist does not. At least, not quite yet.
Taking inspiration from Norman Rockwell while crafting his own unique style, Jaya is building a portfolio that’s forcing people to take a closer, well-deserved look at his work.
Becoming an artist was never a plan of his, never a dream he had from a young age. Jaya didn’t grow up obsessed with Warhol or harboring a mind-blowing talent for painting. He took the required art classes in school, and that was it. It wasn’t until a few years ago that he discovered this hidden talent of his.
“I had art class in school, and I loved it, but I never really had anything going for that… I don’t really have – from when I was younger – any type of painting background or sketching or anything. I have nothing. So, I had to learn”.
His first exposure to the creative world as an adult was through lettering art, aka graffiti. Being a BMX rider, this style naturally found him as he hung around skate parks, like the former Four Seasons Skate Park, where graffiti covered every inch of the walls. But, unlike his friends who were into lettering, he never got the itch to try it. So, instead, he set out to paint his dog. But the cartoony style he painted her in wasn’t cutting it for him.
“I always wanted to paint her, so I started painting her kind of cartoony, and it wasn’t really doing it for me…I just wanted her picture up there, so…I tried to paint a portrait of her, and it turned out pretty halfway decent.”
Jaya painted the rest of the dogs throughout his family, six in total, and from there he was hooked on painting portraiture – finding a natural ability to emulate objects he sees in real life or photographs and translating them to brick walls and canvas. Without knowing it either, his style of painting was reminiscent of another very famous artist.
“So I started brush painting with acrylic paint, and I actually really enjoyed it, and that’s when my mom told me about Norman Rockwell. She said I paint like Norman Rockwell, and I was like, “Oh, who? Who’s Norman Rockwell?” So then I looked up Norman Rockwell, and ever since then, I was like, yeah, that’s exactly what I want to portray.”
Between acrylic paint, spray paint, and now oil paint, Jaya has started casting the likeness of everyday people onto canvas, brick, electrical boxes, and hopefully a future magazine cover.
The latter two would come in time, with his first big break in the form of a brick wall at Four Seasons Skate Park, where the owner let him be a sort of artist in residence.
“Jeff G, the owner of Four Seasons Skatepark, really gave me a great opportunity to grow as an artist, and I probably wouldn’t be where I’m at without that opportunity as far as spray painting goes for sure. Just giving me a space to create and express myself with my paintings, and for him believing in me to do that was crazy. But he gave me one of the most amazing studio spaces I think in the city.”
He spent a year and a half painting and then repainting portraits onto the brick in the studio, where he’d first sketch everything out with charcoal on paper before a drop of spray paint ever touched the brick. He’d find inspiration in everyday people going about their lives, similar to the way Rockwell found his inspiration. To Jaya, a lot of his inspiration also stems from nostalgia and playing off of the youthful energy, curiosity, and innocence in people’s faces, especially kids.
“The people that are just going to work or, you know, riding their bikes on the street or like whatever, people in town…There’s a lot of inspiration I find in people’s facial features and like different, you know, looks from people.”
The studio at the skate park allowed him to get his reps in, practicing day after day and capturing his journey on social media – which happened to catch the eye of the Norman Rockwell Museum. They started following Jaya on Instagram, even commenting on his work.
Jaya also had the unique opportunity to sketch in Rockwell’s studio out east in Arlington, Vermont, earlier this year. Now, months later, he’s continued to build a relationship with the Rockwell team out in Stockbridge, Massachusetts – enough so that they even commented on his wedding photos.
His next big break was with the City of Waukesha, where they commissioned two pieces of artwork to be transformed into wraps for electrical boxes. Then, a hyperrealistic mural for West Allis. But outside of those one-off commissioned projects, Jaya is still mostly self-funding his work, which is no easy feat.
“It’s been kinda hard because I can’t really take too much time off work right now to do something because I have bills. And if it’s not enough money to pay those bills and, you know, profit, it doesn’t… Now, there’s a point where you have to sacrifice, and I’m always willing to do that for what I love to do.”
Luckily for him, he’s got a friend who can help him out with the canvas, but for some of the larger-format paintings, he can put in upwards of $500 in supplies – especially with the rise in costs and the taxes of imported paints. Many of his spray paints come from Spain and elsewhere in Europe, and he’s seen the prices continually increase on every can.
For Jaya, it’s a necessary cost he’s willing to pay to do what he loves. It’s not easy some days; like when the skatepark closed down and he lost his studio space, but it’s absolutely worthwhile for him.
“It sucks, like I like to say, you know, ‘I wish I would’ve started painting earlier’, but yeah I don’t know if I would’ve even been into it like I am now. I’m a lot more mature and disciplined in my life.”
The discipline he has to his craft now will only help him grow as an up-and-coming artist in Milwaukee. He’s even considered taking more technical art classes, but for now, he’s working on building up his portfolio in the hopes of having a small gallery show next winter. He’s also on the hunt for a new studio space and waiting to hear back from a certain, well-established local magazine to see if one of his paintings will grace the cover before the year is over.
Jaya is proof that Milwaukee’s creatives are as talented as ever, and that Milwaukee is hungry; hungry for art that evokes emotion, art that lets us lean into nostalgia, and art that transcends the canvas… or brick.