Jonathan Paul Wagner

"Jonathan Paul Wagner" (born February 26, 1981) is an American painter and lithographer who achieved fame and success through his large scale facial depictions of emotion. Wagner is known for using bright color and layering coupled with intricate patterns to portray human emotion.
Early Life
Jonathan Paul Wagner was born in Long Island. When he was around 8 his family moved to the Englewood New Jersey. Shortly after they moved to Morris County. He briefly moved to Richmond Virginia where he attended school at the Virginia Commonwealth School of of the Arts.
Education
Jonathan attended Virginia Commonwealth School of the arts located in Richmond Virginia. He graduated with a bachelor’s in painting and printmaking because he hadn’t completed all the core requirements for his degree he was forced to spend another year, in that year he ended up getting another major, a bachelor's in existential philosophy.
Work
Jonathan Wagner paired up with the American Psychological Association to do an exhibit, ‘About Face’ that ran in conjunction to the science exhibit psychology: it’s more than you think that ran from February to June in 2002 at the Science Museum of Virginia.They decided to add the exhibit because science is a part of everything in life, this includes art. The Exhibit focused on a vast range of facial expressions “from a cold hard stare to a devious smile”-Jonathan Wagner. From there about 30 of his pieces traveled to various science museums even ending up in Oxford.
In the summer of 2002 while visiting home from college he was given his first mural commission by the YMCA located on Dover-Chester Road in Randolph New Jersey for several murals of varying sizes. The largest of the murals was of a man’s muscular back and outstretched arms it also included depictions of a woman and an additional two other men lifting weights that surrounded the head and torso. The mural was 9x8ft Wagner painted it using acrylic paint. It was designed for the YMCA’s weight room.
Style
Jonathan tends to focus on faces. He finds that through the expressions shown in his art people are able to see some reflections of themselves.
 
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