Jay Crowther was born in Southampton, England in 1974. Jay Crowther  graduated from the University of Brighton with a BA Hons Degree in Fine Art and has been painting and tutoring ever since. Jay Crowther has a diverse range of painting styles and is adventurous in tackling different techniques and subjects with a sensitively considered palette.

This collection of prints is taken from Jay’s current body of work which uses the metaphor of a bears head to represent the wild, untamed and inexperienced vulnerability of youth and its relationship with popular culture. By exploiting the natural human-animal bond Jay is able to embody emotion and expression in a direct and honest intensity. The incongruity of the bear in a human situation is a clever way of expressing the uneasiness of man’s perception of self in relation to acceptable norms.  As a preschool child will draw disproportional representations of figures as they express an emerging concept of ‘self’ and explore emotional response rather than a representational image, so Jay uses oversized, detail heads and regressive, self conscious and representational bodies in a sophisticated concept of ‘self’ as it develops into an independent and socially acceptable creature.

Jay Crowther has exhibited his work at many galleries in the UK and America. He has also exhibited at The National Portrait Gallery, London,including at the BP Portrait Award considered to be ‘the portraiture Oscars. For 34 years it has been the most prestigious prize in the genre’ Mail on Sunday, June 2013