(Photo courtesy of Spring Break Jake)
The Unique Style of Bend Artist, Illustrator & Muralist Spring Break Jake
“It’s like Memento Mori, but you’re at the beach,” says Oregon-based artist and illustrator Spring Break Jake.
For Oregon-based artist Spring Break Jake, making art is both a way to express himself creatively and a way to heal.
Spring Break Jake is the artistic alter-ego of Jacob Kenobi, an artist, illustrator, and muralist based in Bend, Oregon. Along with working with many high-profile clients, Spring Break Jake also creates eye-catching and meaningful paintings and murals that blend gothic motifs with a beachy vibe.
According to Jake, the name represents some of his best memories — childhood trips to Florida. “Even though I’ve always been very landlocked, there’s always been a big love for the ocean and warm, tropical places. And so that’s kind of where the whole aesthetic and Spring Break thing came from.”
Jake is originally from Minnesota and became enamored with action sports like snowboarding. This love for snowboarding, skateboarding, and similar activities brought him west to Oregon.
As far as his creative career, Jake said he’s been drawing and expressing his creativity for basically as long as he can remember. His parents supported and nurtured his creative spark. “They were always just, like, very supportive, like, from a young age. Like, okay, clearly he likes drawing, it’s like, get him paint. Let’s give them colored pencils. Let’s get him like, you know, art classes,” Jake said. “So yeah, I was very fortunate to get to try a lot of mediums when I was younger. Drawing and painting are the ones that just really stuck to me.”
Everything changed in high school for Jake, which was when he learned Photoshop. From there, he pursued a career in graphic design and illustration for clients across the U.S. He still does this kind of work today but is also returning to his roots as someone who draws and paints creatively and not just for client work.
Despite trading Photoshop for a paintbrush and canvas, Jake’s background in design and illustration still informs his work today. According to Jake, he uses graphic design techniques and rules frequently in his analog paintings. “Essentially, I’m just transferring my more digital client illustration style to a canvas, or in my case, I guess, a wood panel,” Jake said. “I think a big thing has been just composition and the layout of my work. And my paintings tend to be very informed by my graphic design work, such as using the rule of thirds or trying to figure out where to place things or add a border.”
The techniques are just the only thing that stands out about Jake’s work — there’s also the actual subjects of his painting. Most of Spring Break Jake can be boiled down into the phrase “beach goth.” There are sunny surfer or snowboarder elements mixed with motifs that evoke the Stoic idea of Memento Mori, or meditating on the finiteness of life.
But underneath the skulls and palm trees lies a deeper meaning. If you visit the Spring Break Jake website, you’ll notice that one of the main taglines on the site is “fine art for your mental health.” “Mental health has always been a very big part of my life. A lot of my style, in general, was very informed by the time I went through a really gnarly bout of depression in my teenage years,” Jake said. “In recent years, therapy has played such a huge positive role in my life that it felt like the perfect sort of message to incorporate into my work.”
Being open, honest, and vulnerable about emotions and feelings is at the core of Spring Break Jake, and is one of the most important things he wants to encourage through his work — and his unique style. He takes inspiration from just about everything, from scuba diving and snowboarding trips to the conversations he’s had in therapy. “I thought about how drawing and painting skulls and skeletons was this cool way of showing that our physical insides can be a way to talk about our mental or emotional insides,” he said.
There’s also the therapeutic benefits of getting an idea onto canvas or wood panel. For Jake, making art isn’t just fulfilling, “it’s its own type of therapy to, like, get things out of my head in a way that doesn’t involve talking or words.”
Jake’s art isn’t the only way he tries to spread positivity, either. Through his Paintbrush per Purchase program, Jake donates 2% of each sale to Caldera Arts, an Oregon nonprofit that works to inspire creativity in youth from underserved rural and urban communities. Along with actual cash, Jake also donates art supplies, paints, and other creative tools.
For Jake, who is currently living his dream, helping others find their creative voice and using his art to spread positive vibes are just part of the privilege of making art a career.
“I love drawing skulls and palm trees as a way to talk about the good and the bad in life and how you can’t have one without the other,” he said.