You have to admire people with staying power, the ones who understand their time will come.
The time for artist Marcus Jansen, who got his professional start selling paintings on New York City street corners, is right now. For some 25 years, the Fort Myers resident has used his art to provoke questions about power, war, technology, surveillance, economics and injustices. Suddenly, everyone, it seems, is pondering similar matters. “All the things I was painting about all these years—commenting on social issues, the economic issues—it all became relevant and personal to a lot of people,” he says.
His career shifted into overdrive, spurred by social justice rallies, climate change, anti-immigrant fervor, historical reckonings—and an attentive art world. “My biggest issue is not what to paint but what to paint first,” he says. “Things are happening so fast.”
Lately, he’s concerned with the narrow telling of U.S. history and escalating immigration debates. He expanded his “Faceless” series to include militarized, Colonial-era figures, spurring questions about Western domination and its ramifications. The toppling of Confederate statues inspired his new “Monument Wars” paintings. Other works consider walls, both the physical and psychological sort. “We have these barriers between human beings, and those are becoming more extreme as we go along,” he says. The themes are personal: Jansen is the son of a German father and a Jamaican mother, raised in the U.S. and Germany.
Critics, curators, agents and audiences have taken note. The artist, shown more extensively in Europe than in the U.S., had his first solo shows at domestic museums over the past year, at the Cornell Fine Arts Museum (now Rollins Museum of Art) in Winter Park and Artis—Naples, The Baker Museum. A painting displayed at the former caught the eye of acclaimed contemporary art dealer Almine Rech, who asked to represent him internationally in collaboration with the Richard Beavers Gallery in Brooklyn. The Bronx Museum of the Arts recently purchased a piece for its permanent collection, the first museum in New York to have done so—fittingly as it is Jansen’s childhood home and the location of his second studio space.
Jansen hopes his works encourage reflection and conversation. “My paintings don’t offer answers, unfortunately, but they definitely pose questions,” he says.
He wants to affect change in other ways, too. In 2019, he launched the Marcus Jansen Foundation Fund, administered by Collaboratory (formerly Southwest Florida Community Foundation). It seeks to bring art to economically disadvantaged youth and art therapy to veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. “Art saved my life,” explains Jansen, a U.S. Army veteran who saw combat during the First Gulf War. He also directed a portion of the proceeds from a recent show to benefit Mott Haven Community Fridge, a nonprofit founded by sixth-grade teachers to fight food insecurity in the Bronx. “I’m inspired by these communities,” he says. “It’s important for me to give back.” —Jennifer Reed