09 Jun ARTY | Jake Mansbridge
Jake Mansbridge is a 24 year-old graduate who lives in Staffordshire, England. He enjoys producing artwork in a variety of media, not only with traditional methods such as pencil and pen, but digitally, using various software such as Adobe Illustrator. Jake currently markets his commercial graphic designs through the international website Red Bubble and India-based website Cupick, which prints the designs onto a range of products. One of his predominant collections, dubbed ‘Dumplings’, features a recognizable human form in a range of different symbolic designs. Through his Blinker & Cam mini-comic series, Jake addresses current affairs in a satirical tone by following the thoughts of two likeable sentient security camera characters – ‘Blinker‘ and ‘Cam’. He has also done some commissioned graphic design work for clients, which includes recently producing several album artworks for French band ‘Milan’.
Jake has always been fascinated by biology and evolution and this passion has been a major inspiration for much of his artwork. His parents remember his ability at a very early age to draw animals accurately from memory alone. At the age of 15, Jake took part in a competition to design a creature for the ITV UK television series ‘Primeval’ and was chosen as runner up out of the 5000 entries. He went on to complete a BSc (Hons) in Zoology at the University of Derby, England, and whilst studying, his interest in producing artwork inspired by xenobiology and astrobiology flourished. His knowledge in this area allows him to design fictitious organisms which reflect biological principles, allowing them to appear thoroughly realistic. Through this theme, he hopes to encourage the viewer to appreciate the complexity and peculiarity of some of the real organisms on Earth. In 2013, Jake displayed a collection of his work with this theme as the featured student artist at an art exhibition in Dunphy’s Gallery in Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire. This was the first time any of his work was seen by the public. Up until this event, Jake had modestly kept his artwork a very private passion.
His collection of artwork based on the theme of xenobiology forms part of a greater conceptual project which includes short stories, contextual literature and graphic artwork. The different aspects of the project link tightly to develop a complete picture of the fictional universe. The short stories, collectively entitled ‘Stories of The Wastelands, The Spacelands & All In- Betweens’ is a growing collection, several stories of which are currently available for Kindle on Amazon.
As well as art and writing, Jake continues to dedicate time to his passion for music. He is currently in a band called ‘Maxwell Avenue’ and performs original music in and around the Midlands. Maxwell Avenue’s music can be found on SoundCloud under the username ‘MaxwellAvenueOfficial’.
Jake’s artwork can be found online through his Facebook page Jake McCarthy Mansbridge Art & Design and on Twitter as @JMMDesign.
He also welcomes the odd email from interested folk at: Jake.Mansbridge@gmail.com.
