Jarrod Andrew Becker
Showing his work under the name, jabart.
1968 – Born in Kentucky
Jarrod Becker is a contemporary artist living & working in the Northern Kentucky, Greater Cincinnati area. His work resides in collections throughout the United States.
- Represented by Garner Narrative / Garner Large, Louisville, KY (garnernarrative.com )
- Turps Banana CC 2024-2025
About Split Collective
Split 2025-2026 will be a touring an exhibition by The Split Collective, a group of sixty plus painters and sculptors from Ireland, the UK, Europe and the U.S. all of whom have come through the Turps and MASS, either the correspondence course or any of the onsite programs.
Split was formed during the highly regarded TurpsBanana and MASS Correspondence Courses of 2023/2025 and the members have come together through a common desire to strengthen bonds and to support each other’s creative work into the future.
–Selected Past Exhibitions
2025 – Postcards From the Artist Studio, Split Collective, Both Gallery, London, UK (group exhibition) 2025 – “Jersey Summer Exhibition”, St. Helier, Jersey, Channel Islands, UK (group exhibition)
2025 – FOD 2024 (Faces of Death), Brooklyn Grain, Brooklyn, NY (Group show and print release)
2025 – “SPLIT3”, Split Collective, Candid Gallery, London, England, UK (Turps Banana CC group exhibition)
2025 – “SPLIT2”, Split Collective, Cross Street Arts, Wigan, England, UK (group exhibition)
2025 – “Shifting Sands”, CCA Galleries International, St. Helier, Jersey, Channel Islands (group exhibition)
2025 – “Leavings”, Garner Narrative, Louisville, KY (solo exhibition)
2025 – “200C”, Us By Us Gallery, Covington, KY (group exhibition)
2025 – “SPLIT”, Split Collective,The Dispensary Gallery, Wrexham, Wales, UK (group exhibition)
2025 – Ensemble Theatre Gallery, Cincinnati, OH (group show)
2024 – Us By Us Gallery, Covington, KY (group show)
2022 – Y’alls Hootenanny, BLDG Gallery, Covington, KY (group show)
2014 – BLDG Gallery, Covington, KY (annual group exhibition)
2016 – South Street Gallery, Wilmington, OH (solo exhibition)
2015 – Covington Arts, Covington, KY (group show)
2010 – High Street Gallery, Cincinnati, OH (group exhibition)
2008 – Red Tree Gallery, Cincinnati, OH (group exhibition)
2007 – Southgate House Gallery, Newport, KY (solo exhibition)
2003 – Dicere Gallery, Cincinnati, OH (solo exhibition)
2002 – Gallery 109, Covington, KY (solo exhibition)
2001 – Art Omnibus, Cincinnati, OH (group show)
1999 – The Cove, Cincinnati, OH (solo exhibition)
1998 – Base Art Gallery, Cincinnati, OH (solo exhibition)
1995 – Thornapple, West Chester, OH (solo exhibition)
1994 – Base Art Gallery, Cincinnati, OH (group show)
1994 – The Attic Gallery, Newport, KY (group show)
Grants, Awards & Honors
Honorable Kentucky Colonel, 2022
Great Meadows Foundation Artist Grant recipient, 2017
Great Meadows Foundation Artist Grant recipient, 2015
Northern Kentucky Scholarship Exhibition, Third Floor Gallery, Northern Kentucky University, 1994-95
Bibliography
“Jersey Summer Exhibition 2025”
“Gallery / Life & Style in Jersey”, Shifting Sands, April/May, 2025
“William and Mary Review” College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, VA, 2009
“Citybeat Magazine” “bruder” show review, 2007
“CaGzine.com” Interview, 2007
“CityBeat Magazine”. Articulations: Inside Artists’ Heads, 2006
“William and Mary Review”, College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, VA, 2005
“The Licking River Review”, NKU Publication, Highland Heights, KY, 1995
Somewhat of a Bio
I have been a wanderer of sorts doing everything from selling boutique wines to working a horse farm, to photographing muscle cars to building backdrops at a scene shop before delving into the world wide web and design, working in television media for a LOCAL CBS affiliate for 12 plus years.
While I’ve studied painting, drawing, and multiple media of fine art at Northern Kentucky University, Anthropology at the University of Cincinnati, and Political Science at Thomas More College, I do not hold a formal degree of any sort.
Being self-driven and opposed to indoctrination, I have always felt I had more to gain through a path of personal experiential education and the taking of chance artistically on my own time to fail and prosper.
During this time, never one to keep still, I founded an art & craft market event based out of Rabbit Hash, KY called Folksiders. I was a founding partner of a digital publisher called Willow Frog, illustrating digital interactive children’s books and I have since illustrated and published the hardback book, The Boy Who Wore a Dress.
Currently, I am the Artistic Director for an art and design consultancy studio in Covington, KY called BLDG (www.BLDGbrands.com).
Through this position, I have worked on well over 60+ murals, designing, illustrating and/or painting them. These murals can be found in Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Virginia, and Tennessee.
I live in Erlanger, KY near the railroad tracks in an old 1880’s wood frame monster that sucks me dry of money, muscle, & effort while refueling myself with reading, digging in creeks and beaches, collecting stones and shells, cooking fresh food, keeping company with my wonderful family & friends, and making art.
About the Work
I love the theatricality of painting existing as an action or happening in a real moment time but re-enacted or pretended in a visual from something taken from a true thought or reality – dramatic representation as an art or profession.
“Precision often destroys the dream” – a phrase given to me by a friend reading an article about Gaugin who said that this reminded them of my work.
I love the messiness and wildness of making art and the perfectness found in imperfection.
Through expressive strokes and intentional chaos, I aim to capture the raw, untamed aspects of the human spirit
Using a plethora of mixed media found in my studio at hands reach, I try to build richly layered works that invite tactile and emotional engagement. My art is a celebration of imperfection, an ongoing exploration of the balance between chaos and harmony, and a testament to the quiet resilience embedded in everyday life.
“I like energy to come from my work while also containing an easy going carefree kind of attitude stemming from the boldness and confidence of the strokes. And yet that ‘wildness’ is also carefully tamed and encapsulated by a compelling sense of compositional strength.”
On Inspiration
Inspiration: All can & will inspire.
The potential is present in everything: a word, the scent of warm wool, painted lines on a roadway, the tilt of a persons head, milk in ones cereal bowl.
You have to create inspiration, you have to search for it, design it; you have to want it. There must be a need to be dazzled, intrigued, overwhelmed, interested.
You have to take yourself on little crusades of curiosity and fulfillment.
You have to dig in the dirt to find it, you have to enjoy scratching through the surface, you have to sift the sand to find those things that many never see. Here lies the marvel of life.
The marvel is not in the luck of occurrence or the waiting to be hit over the head by surprise, but that which is found through your own personal search and thirsts for wonder.
And if you set about on this search, you will find that inspiration can be the beginning step of a path one cannot stray from.
And the most important step lies beyond inspiration, and that step is the process of creation. For it is there that lies salvation and ones definition as an artist and a human being.