Color is everywhere. Summers are filled with yellow sun rays and greenery, winters with cool blues, greys, and chilly whites. Color is natural. Color is real. Color is also one of the very first things that our brain thinks of when we see the word “art”. 

However, the very purpose and intentions of color in any type of art or design are always more than just aesthetic or creating a good “scheme”. Colors set the theme, set the tone, and above all, create emotion. It is scientifically proven that when the brain translates a color from the eye, each color affects hormones, energy levels, and mind clarity in a different way (renketkisi.com). For every color, there is an emotion attached. 

This fact makes color psychology an incredible pedestal to make artwork from, especially artwork in the narrative form. Narrative art is the process of telling a story that utilizes a great deal of intense emotions, and is also my extreme passion. After studying artists such as Wes Anderson, Sandy Skoglund, and more, along with practicing my own works, I began to understand the relationship between color psychology and narrative art and pushed myself to create based on those ideas.

In this gallery, you will view my work and thoughts within color psychology in five different mediums: film, photography, poetry, installation, and design. 

Ducks in a Row is a short film utilizing a pale yellow to tell a story of mental health and vibrant struggle. This work serves the purpose of creatively enlightening viewers on the hardships of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, to represent OCD correctly in an aesthetically jarring manner, telling the tales of what a day, week, and month of OCD looks and feels like, getting in depth and placing the viewer in the mind of the victim with both visual and conceptual intent.

Pink is Your Favorite Color is a short film that utilizes a soft pink tone to capitalize on ideas of love, loss, denial, and memories. This narrative heavy project focuses on the story of a young man who is in great denial of a lost loved one. Personal film style and techniques such as high key lighting, intentionally awkward writing, framework divided by shapes, the contrast of symmetry and asymmetry, and slow pacing work hand in hand with the choice of pink to develop the story of denial.

An Introspective Seminar of a Straight White Male, as Told by Jaden Payne is a poetry and photography book that focuses on white privilege, human rights, self realization, and irony. The gallery will display large prints on the wall that are pages of a larger book that will be available to read through. The poetry works in a combination of rhythm and prose to explore the arch of a character, who may or may not be a dramatic, extremely introspective version of myself. The redundant usage of gray tones work to imply unoriginality, boring personality, and a blank, obvious canvas for judgement. 

Apophenia is an installation based work, the first I have ever put together. It utilizes a bright, deep, melodramatic blue to access a lot of ongoing themes in my life and art, including depression, obsession, nostalgia, euphoria, and hope. There is also an electric orange lamp that shines down a faded blue light. In many ways, this work is a self portrait. The installation is, by every intention, a melodramatic, nostalgic, euphoric, melancholy immersive experience. It is everything I am proud of being, everything I am ashamed of, everything I look forward to doing, and everything that troubles me. 

Before Saturation is the only work in which color is not the main focus, due to the fact that it is intended to display my thoughts and ideas before they flourish into something more. Poetry is oftentimes my way of ideating and iterating, and displayed in the gallery is a series of roughly thirty rather unpolished poems from the last two years.

Greetings. I’m Jaden Payne. Welcome to my artist statement of my exhibition. If you have not yet seen the title, this exhibition is called, These Colors Are Mine. Please Do Not Take Them, I Don’t Have Extras. You may be thinking to yourself, “Wow, that is quite a long, unnecessary title.”, and you would be correct.

Now that I have validated your unwanted opinion of my title choice, allow me to explain myself (not to also validate my title choice, but because I am institutionally obligated to do so):

 I am an artist who works in narrative. My brain cannot process the reason behind making a work of art unless it tells an emotional story. I utilize film, photography, design, and creative writing to tell stories. I experiment with composition, framing, pacing, and more to guide the viewer through an aesthetic adventure. And, above all, I use color to convey both raw and hidden emotions in every story I tell. A pale yellow to unconsciously signify illness and stress. A deep, intimidating blue to convey an overwhelming sadness, or a light pink to show love, compassion, and loss. The list goes on, and I know you do not care enough to continue reading it. I did not always use colors as I do now, however. 

I tried for quite some time to be an intelligent designer, a skilled photographer, or an aspiring filmmaker. I studied other artists who did these things well, Wes Anderson, Sandy Skoglund, Mark Dion, Stephen Shore, and more. I tried quite hard to just make things that looked nice, and to be okay with only that. That was the easy thing to do whilst taking four art courses, to just make shit. Yet, I couldn’t. I needed a full narrative to fulfill what I wanted to create. But there was still one glaring issue: I couldn’t ever actually tell the story. My obsession with perfection (which I thought to be a simple character trait at the time) would always get in the way. None of my writings were good enough. No photograph was sufficient. There was never enough emotion to satisfy me. And above all, I was constantly unconsciously aware that I would never have full control of the audience I was telling the story to, and that was simply too much for me to handle. 

So I gave up. I let colors take over. Not because I wanted to, but because I had to. I had creatively and emotionally drained myself over the past four years in an attempt to write, direct, and make stories that were completely in my control. I wanted to make artwork so perfect that the viewer was seeing and feeling exactly what I wanted them to. I wanted to create pieces so “hypnotizingly” effective that I was essentially a puppeteer, forcing the audience of my work down the one, single path that I created. 

This was impossible, and thus I never finished any of those stories. Dozens of scripts written, storyboards done, and ideas ideated for no outcome. Thousands of creative hours wasted. 

Until I found the beautiful simplicity of color psychology, and henceforth giving up on trying to control the audience. I would let the colors do that from now on, as I carefully selected which ones would work for the stories I wanted to tell. For each color, there is scientifically a set of emotions attached, and I would learn to use that to my advantage.

Now, back to that whole “obsession” issue. In the process of painstakingly attempting to mind control an audience (that I do not even have yet), I lost myself. I began to experience extreme symptoms of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder in 2017 - I was later diagnosed in 2020. Intrusive thoughts, vivid obsessions, ridiculous compulsions, anxiety, a real package deal. I could no longer feel the emotions I was attempting to convey. A solid combination of creative exhaust and mental illness sent me spiraling down. I could not remember the last time I was happy or excited, or even sad or nervous. My entire emotional palette felt fake. My memory began to flutter yet I could not stop feeling nostalgic, missing the way I used to feel. I remember what my emotions felt like, but they were no longer there. And, I must admit, it is enraging. Going through days, weeks, even months at a time with a constant emotional unavailability. My obsession with narrative and conceptual ideas was becoming unhealthy. I tried so hard to tell fictional stories that I forgot to enjoy my own non-fiction. 

While I found colors to replace emotions in story, I have yet to find a replacement for my own. That is the reason for my tediously long title. Aside from these colors you’ll see in this show, I don’t currently have much left. So please do not take them.

A lot of this work will tackle the struggle of mental illness. A lot of this work will provide commentary on human rights. I wish I could tell you that I did this to help others, but I am by no means in a strong enough mental state to do anything that heroic. This gallery is simply a diary of conscious and intrusive thoughts alike that flourished into creative work as I panicked to figure out why my own brain works the way it does. I know I’m selfish. I’m working on it.

Thank you