Lives and works in New York, NY
Jake Still is a painter based in New York City, building compositions of color that feel remembered rather than directly observed. He holds an MFA from California College of the Arts and a BFA from Syracuse University, and has exhibited internationally in Athens, Milan, Seattle, Brooklyn, and Los Angeles. Recent residencies include the NARS Foundation and Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Colorado.
Still’s work is guided by momentum, a quiet pursuit of feeling, memory, and lived experience. Each painting begins as writing, drawing from fragments of daily life and recurring thoughts. These textual beginnings shift into movement, dissolving into color and atmosphere.
Working in oil and acrylic, he develops layered surfaces through stains, washes, and restrained gestures. Pigment is allowed to pool, bleed, and settle into raw canvas, forming spatial fields that hover between structure and openness. His process unfolds slowly, shaped by repetition and attentiveness, leaving space for uncertainty and discovery. The paintings hold a subtle tension between density and air, gesture and suspension, offering viewers a moment where sensation lingers beyond the image.