Exclusive Interview with Jeremy Mann, 1st Prize winner of the MPB Photography Award Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize 2025
Possessing a bottomless desire to create with a rotating arsenal of modest and sophisticated tools — from oil to home-made Polaroids and bolognese sauce lids — Jeremy Mann fell in love with abstraction early on, before obtaining the fine art degrees that would allow him to throw himself into the work with the unshackled obsession of a self-made artist, and the technical prowess of an art school alum. All, in service of a fearless vision.
Enigmatic, gritty and sublime, full of intentional stains and strokes, Jeremy’s artworks leave behind the indelible imprint of a strong identity along with a tight grip on the viewer’ soul. Photographs, paintings, films and sculptures, each a step, a stumble, a dive towards self-knowledge and growth.
His winning work Anhel — angel in Ukrainian — a photograph taken with his analogue wine box Polaroid camera, becomes the springboard to explore childhood baggage, lessons and niche influences that make each Jeremy Mann artwork a snapshot into his winding creative psyche.
Interview with Jeremy Mann
When did your fascination with abstraction begin? Was there a special moment when you realised life is more exciting slightly off focus?
I actually began my life as an artist doing only abstract, or rather, interpretive emotional subconscious paintings for many years. It was only after I realised my inability to paint a realistic rendition of a figure or a face was a limitation, an inability, and not a choice, that I decided to eradicate that limitation through study. Being comfortable with both ends of the balance allows me to express myself more fluently and keep my time in the studio exciting.
Your art practice extends from charcoal drawings to experimental films – escapist, enigmatic, deeply cinematic. One artist that comes to mind is experimental film-maker Maya Deren. Can you share some of the artists and strange corners one can look for inspiration?
Oh man, you want to come over for a month of film nights in the garden on the outdoor projector!? Large and loud they should always be viewed, the advent of tiny screens is making us less experienced. Maya Deren for sure, and there are so many others, especially the Eastern European film directors, like the puppet and stop-motion of Jiří Barta or the fantastic films of Jiří Menzel. Tarkovsky has always been a deep influence — Stalker of course, but the deeply emotional works of The Mirror and The Sacrifice, its damn poetry in vision, like dreams to me.
I try to make my own films as authentic poetic memories based on directors of emotion like him. He said it best, that one of the saddest things we are seeing is how afraid people are becoming — especially young people — to be alone with themselves for extended periods of time.
The things you can express through film are endless and unbounded as an art form, and it makes a deep impact when you have that two hours of darkness and attention, the only way to experience this art form. That is no longer the case. The average human attention span is becoming quite pathetic. We’ve exchanged great experiences for the lazy simplicity of a two-inch square.
There are a few great streaming services which host incredible databases: Easterneuropeanmovies.com, sovietmoviesonline.com and Asian-movies.com. The Alexandrian Library of the masters of film I was never introduced to in my American Bubble as a fresh youthen sponge.
Could you briefly take us behind the scenes of your winning artwork Anhel?
You know, it’s cold in the mountain, and I refuse to pay for the Diesel to heat this antiquated monstrosity of pipes they call a heating system, so during this photoshoot I covered the antique conservatory that came with our house completely with black plastic to mimic my old photoshoot studio, where the light can be completely controlled.
That is perhaps one of only a few foundations of my art: LIGHT. The old stone walls were covered with black fabric, except for the model and the light. She is a brilliant model from Ukraine and we played dark ambient music, with multiple different outfits from my collection until the perfect moment all fell together and I shot it onto the old extinct Fuji FP100c pull-apart colour polaroid negatives, from a camera I made out of a wine box (my bestie since 2015).
With these polaroids, I’ve discovered through years of experimentation ways of enhancing, altering, almost painting on the negative itself with household chemicals and random tools like bolognese sauce lids, crusty oil paint brushes, my bleach numb fingers, airguns and hairdryers. Working directly on the negative, expired and no longer manufactured, to make it more terrifyingly exciting, is highly stressful and satisfying, like a leap into the unknown. One wrong move and the entire image is gone. Another and it’s a stunning surprise.
I have an inkling, but it’s never until I enlarge them that I see the end results. It has always been an important foundation in my process to include accident, to work with it, to implement it, to accept it. Good stuff for the soul, good stuff for the art.
Your creative process involves a fascinating mix of tools, techniques, research and exploration. What is your main drive behind it?
Expressing our true selves, the one we hide from everyone, yet is the thing with makes us all bonded as humans, is such a difficult thing to do correctly. To speak the truth to people in conversation without placating, lying, avoiding, sugaring. This is where art throbs with genuity. It’s hard to spot a liar in life, but quite easy to see the gimmicks of liars in art. Art is something completely human — it’s the expression of our souls, creativity, our attempt to complement the cosmos and mother nature, to authenticate that we are her children.
“Nobody has yet been you, and you need to find the right combination of unknown words to form the poetry in your heart never heard before.”
Doing this is fucking difficult — especially in our modern times and in controlling societies and social circles. But the feeling of creating is incomparable to any drug, experience, relationship I can think of. It touches on our great nature, the true religion of all of us. It speaks better than our limited language. Learning how to best express our true self requires this research, this exploration, this experimentation because nobody has yet been you, and you need to find the right combination of unknown words to form the poetry in your heart never heard before. Only then will you be fully understood, and more importantly, fully understand yourself and the life you live.
My main drive is my addiction to this life and my addiction to that feeling, creating things that have never been, but are absolute expressions of my blink of an existence. A blink that nobody has ever been nor be again. I loath mundanity and placation. I thrive when on the edge, through change, growing, living with passion in my heart.
It is quite often that I look at these exposures, this art, and am completely baffled that it came from me.
You spoke recently about how studying life outdoors has provided you with new abilities to create. Why would you encourage someone to do the same? What created that need in you?
Kids these days are born into a world where the mobile phone and the internet are a given, just like I was born into a world where a photograph was a given. There have been times before we cannot fathom that were completely different, and we can choose to experience that to broaden our vision.
Creating paintings directly from photographs is attempting to duplicate an already existing, mechanical interpretation so ridiculously far from how we actually experience life, that I cringe anytime I see someone photographing a sunset considered beautiful as if they are convinced that they will be recording something accurately, when in fact they are making a belittling notation.
Painting from life does not mean making a landscape or painting a figure. It could mean just going outside and painting what you are inspired by all around you. It’s debilitating to our abilities to even consider the idea that this means “landscape.” It means looking at LIFE, how we see it, and trying to capture the essence of how that experience feels. This is the place to train ourselves as artists. A photograph has its uses, but there’s a persevering belief that it holds all the information necessary to create a work of art. More often than not, this is easily proven wrong.
Aside from that, being in nature has proven healing qualities to our mentality. Spending time alone, focused, studying, looking, smelling, listening, it’s good for the soul. It strengthens awareness, calm, focus, memory. This has an affect that is worthy and necessary for any artist, for any human.
You’re an extremely prolific artist. Are there times when you feel you can’t create, when you doubt your choices or process?
Well of course! You can’t be a damn bullet train all day, every day. My other foundation, besides light, is balance. I work hard, I calm hard. Death is part of life and sadness and beauty are one. Anyone who attempts to distract us from death or sadness doesn’t fully understand the meaning of life, and their advice should be taken carefully.
It is necessary to not create. To do other things with the mind, to simply look and experience, to intake instead of output. It’s taken many a burn out to realise this, and I continue to improve. The emotional requirement of creating art is draining, so I like to balance my time with physical work and engineering projects to tickle the other twists of the grey matter.
“It is necessary to not create. To do other things with the mind, to simply look and experience, to intake instead of output. It’s taken many a burn out to realise this.”
When doubt creeps in, that’s a different story. Doubt is built into us by our parents, our childhood, the society we arrived in, and continues in the pubescent adulthood we surround ourselves with in our day and age. We were told as kids constantly, “No, can’t do that, don’t do that”. And now, when given our freedom, we say it to ourselves. We worry about being accepted because we were taught to fit in. Which is helpful for animalistic survival, the odd get left behind…
Some vestigial part of our animal brain still trying to keep us from flying. It must be realised that doubt is something beaten into our brains – doubt to be ourselves, to be different, to be unique, to be confident in that uniqueness. Its all so hypocritical. Self-confidence is a great virtue, and it’s ostracised during much of our youth. I try my best to remember this as I go through my creative process. Only a rare few are free of the doubts curse.
“The more artists experience freedom, the more apt they are to handle the throws of self-doubt – the greatest murderer of the soul.”
I remember, “No, it’s not stupid, you’re afraid,” when I glimmer trying something new – and that yes, I can do anything I damn well choose. And so can you. There are repercussions, of course, but in essence, one can do anything they desire. From painting with flame throwers and automotive oil on lead to pissing on your own medium and dancing naked with flowers on a canvas. If it’s what you want to do, and you need to learn something from it to better express yourself. It is freedom. The more artists experience freedom, the more apt they are to handle the throws of self-doubt – the greatest murderer of the soul.
Has there been one artwork of yours that its creation was somehow transformative – a catalyst for a new journey or direction?
This has happened several times. The transformative moment, the piece of great change. I find that when my art tends to plateau, when it’s good but dismally the same, not evolving. I throw myself kicking and screaming into the unknown, and from that abyss comes a piece which remains as an exposure of that fearlessness, or carelessness (in a good sense).
I often speak of the night I came back to the studio after an evening at the bar alone pissed off that my education was leading me down a path of mundanity. Every artist in my classes were creating the same skilful dribble, and I wanted more, I wanted the abstract expressionist me to come through with this knowledge I had been paying for, learning.
I threw all Cans and Cant’s to the wind and let myself free. It was only after that night of expression that my artwork turned a corner and brought me to a new level. It’s not what’s in your hands, it’s what’s in your head that makes a great artist.
More recently, with the death of my best friend, who had rarely left my side for over 16 years. To paint her, just for myself… You simply cannot create gimmick, copy, or product when you paint with tears in your eyes. You paint true. Each of these moments I add to my repertoire of “THIS is how you should be creating at every moment.”
Technically surprising was the loss of a studio during a big move to another country. This is what forced me to go outside and make hundreds of studies from life. When I returned to paint in the studio, everything was different. I’m a great believer in multifaceted-ness contributing great progressions across every medium. If you want to get better at painting, try composing music.
The process of an artist is a boundless universe of untaken opportunities.
What’s something you’ve learned from painting and photography that has changed how you live — not just how you make art?
Everything! I remember every place on this planet I’ve ever made a painting from life outside. This sort of awareness has most assuredly emboldened my daily presence in living.
Before the mobile phone, Works In Progess didn’t exist. I learned a long time ago that these WIPs are a danger to the success of an artist and their way of living. In the early ages of my art life, artists struggled alone in a room with their soul on a surface speaking back at them. When they felt discouraged, doubtful, in need of acceptance… there was nothing to do but struggle through it alone.
Struggle does wonderful things for the skin and bones. Now, when an artist is feeling the need for self-appreciation or unsure of their confidence and quality, they exchange an image of an unfinished expression for the candy of applause and encouragement.
It’s not that I’m “tough on myself” or something like that. It’s good to grow this way, it builds a confidence required to be an artist, putting their soul on the wall in a world of opinionated complainers and self-appointed judges. You really get to know yourself in this room all alone —empowering and humbling at the same time.
I wish everyone had the confidence to create. All too often I hear the old phrase, “Oh no, I can’t draw.” When in fact, yes, you can. You can sing too, and dance. No matter who you are, you can create in your way, and there is something to learn from creativity that is being smothered in our schools, our youth, our lives even as adults. What they are truly saying is left out: “I cannot draw… how things look. How other artists draw. How skilled trained people draw what things are ‘supposed’ to look like.”
But that’s not the question. Do you have the ability, the courage, the self-confidence, the self-awareness to express yourself wild, free and true? I don’t want to see another Rembrandt sketch, I want to see something I’ve never seen before, and that’s hidden in you… in everyone.
Adults afraid to draw — what has our humanity become?!
Why did you enter the Beautiful Bizarre Magazine Art Prize?
Oh, because you tickled my tingles with an Analogue Photography classification during the year that I finally started to figure out how to allow myself to accept these photographs as works of art, instead of just references for influence. I honestly didn’t think anything would come of it, it was more like a gift to my camera than anything else. Like it deserved to be allowed to enter art competitions.
That photography — analogue especially — is still a ripe path in an unknown forest of creative endeavours that has promise and purpose. I’ve been expanding and experimenting with incorporating the photography into physical works of art, blending painting and photography together, and receiving this award has been a great encouraging slap on the ass. Regardless, I’ve been doing this for years and will continue to do so whether or not anyone ever knows. This art is for me.
What do you feel you have gained from this experience?
It was a nice push off the cliff to try new things, one of those moments where I threw carelessness to the wind and it tends to pay off with encouragement.
Would you recommend it and encourage others to enter? If so, why?
Yes, of course! But only if they don’t do it hoping they’ll win anything. Applying to hundreds of juried competitions and exhibitions and not being accepted is something all artists need to come to grips with. Welcome to the art world.
There have been artists who existed, who created every day and nobody knew about it until they were dead. And think of all those who created and after they died, nobody still knows. It’s not about gaining recognition, its about believing in yourself despite it all.
I think there is tremendous opportunities these days for artists to have their work seen. Unfortunately, it isn’t seen correctly. Millions more people can see your artwork across the world easily — but in a truncated viewer. It’s like gaining the ability to time travel, at the loss of your sight.
Not sure if it’s truly a good thing or a distracting disease. But no matter what you create, no matter what people around you may say, somewhere in this world are people who feel the same way you do. And if you find the strength to express that feeling, those thoughts, with genuine authenticity and creativity, it will be felt by others worlds apart.
It encourages to be self-confident, to learn to grow, to attempt to appreciate uniqueness in a miasma of conformity. Grand ideas it may sound, but a little click to share your vision can have great ripples across humanity, whether you ever know it or not.
