Jeremy Shipley

I am an artist and author from the rural Illinois countryside of the Saint Louis Metropolitan Region. I have a background studying traditional drawing and painting methods as well as comparative literature, and began incorporating digital imaging techniques into my creative process while earning my MFA in Visual Art from Washington University in St. Louis. Since graduate school, I have worked various jobs in printing, imaging, document preparation, and have also taught university art courses in drawing, design, digital media, and art history. While continuing to share my work with an expanding audience of like-minded fans of science fiction and fantasy, I have also worked collaboratively on published artworks for comics, zines, book covers, animated short films, and concept designs for role-playing adventure games.

My interdisciplinary practice thrives at the ontological intersection of Art and Literature, and the research I do observes how visual storytelling systems from different media and cultures experiment with symbolic imagery, pictorial elements, and abstract design principles to communicate speculative ideologies to a specific audience. Because the fluency of visual literacy varies widely in increasingly isolated and mediated communities, I am particularly concerned with how the language of Design Fiction is used to distort perceptions of class and mental wellness within society. The melancholic characters and uncanny environments depicted in many of my pictures are subliminally shaped by the depressed social behaviors and remote life experiences shared among the dislocated communities I grew up playing in.

Uploading intertextual idylls through a neural network of pixelated portals, my Retro-Romantic impression of the world imagines a flickering hologram of humanity that, even though increasingly alienated and displaced, might suggest a more equitably accessible future for those who choose to continue chasing their dreams down the rabbit hole.

In my free time, I enjoy reading, collecting physical media, and sharing my passion of drawing and visual culture with others.