Bio

Jay Filly is a contemporary artist and illustrator from Ghana. He was born in Ibadan, Nigeria. For his  secondary education, he studied Visual Arts at Pope John Senior High and Minor Seminary in the Eastern part of Ghana. Jay has a Higher National Diploma in Commercial Art Painting and Degree in Painting – Illustration and Animation from Takoradi Technical University. He is passionate about sustainability, which inspired his use of discarded plastics to create his artworks revolving around childhood memories, market scenes, social issues,etc. He also does other kind of art such as traditional and digital related art (canvas painting, pen/pencil shading, digital illustrations and 2d animation) for commercial purposes.

Work Process

My inspiration comes from memories of the past, life experiences, historical stories and so on. I visualize the idea in mind, sketch it down in my sketch pad. I mount and prime my canvas on a wooden chasis, wait for the canvas to dry and do my sketch. 

For making plastic art: I go out to collect discarded plastics from people around, plastic waste sites, pick up discarded plastics I find around me and go to the sea to gather some plastics. I bring them home to wash and dry them. After, I sort out the colours and cut them to my preferred size and work with them. In working with them, I now cut them according to the sketch I do and paste them on the canvas with glue sticks by the use of a glue gun. It takes about two to three weeks to complete a piece, mostly 30*40 inches. I typically spend about four to five hours in a day on my work pieces.

 For the pen drawing, I work for about three to four hours a day and it take one to two weeks to complete a piece depending on the size and what I’m working on. The same approach relates to the digital illustration and the other kind of artworks. 

I also love to sketch which takes about 30 to 45minutes daily; children are mostly my muse.