Jaylen Fultz makes space for joy in ‘It Gets Better’

When Jaylen Fultz began taking painting more seriously earlier in his teenage years, he said his canvases tended to be far bleaker, dominated by blacks and deep blues – shades the artist then associated with his depressive headspace.

“I would make work completely black,” said Fultz, interviewed ahead of the June 20 opening of his debut solo exhibition, “It Gets Better,” on display through mid-July at MPACC BoxPark. “But yeah, I experienced a lot when I was younger, and the paintings were definitely darker and sadder. … I would fill up my notebook [with sketches] and people would be like, ‘Oh, this is so depressing.’”

Fultz traced aspects of this to an upbringing in which he frequently found himself on the move, his family logging time in neighborhoods on every side of Columbus. For the artist, these constant relocations could be destabilizing, often leaving him feeling as though he didn’t have a place he could call his own. “And I’m not trying to shame my parents, I love them and I know they did their best, but that was our reality,” he said. “And so, many times, I did feel defeated. But my parents had this certain resilience, and they still knew how to smile at the end of the day.”

For Fultz, art proved essential to developing this skillset for himself, the practice giving him a space in which he could begin to work through the often-heavy emotions he felt in adolescence. Describing his early practice, Fultz said he tended to exist as a sponge, his first paintings bearing a heavy resemblance to the work of influences such as Jean-Michel Basquiat. The artist eventually began to home in on his own voice after he discovered a community of local creatives while taking part in ARtsway, a mural mentorship program for high school students facilitated by Maroon Arts Group, All People Arts, and the Franklinton Arts District.

“And being in community with groups like Maroon, and actually seeing artists working in real time, being their own person, it made me want to find my own identity,” said Fultz, who gradually began to expand within his canvases, augmenting the once-prevalent blacks, grays and blues with pops of red and yellow, his usual cast of dour characters eventually giving way to those who wore expressions of delight.

The larger-scale works on display in “It Gets Better” are almost universally dominated by smiles – and not the reserved, tight-lipped kind but rather wide, unabashedly toothy grins. Witness the joyously impressionistic “Adult Swim,” which captures a vivid water park scene complete with patrons gliding down twisting red and yellow slides and lounging comfortably in lazy rivers. Then there’s “Greener Grass,” a sun-kissed scene that incorporates every color of the rainbow and features a grinning gaggle perched on the edge of an expansive green field. 

“For this piece, where it started, I wanted to have kind of like a dream vacation,” said Fultz, 19. “Part of this show is [documenting] not only resilience but the why – what we strive for, and what we’re working toward. And at the end of the day, I think most people just want to be happy and chill with the people they love. I know that’s the goal for me, and that’s what’s represented in this, where it’s a total dream-type place, and then I wanted it to be a family vacation inside of that dream.” 

These expressions of joy can serve multiple purposes, capturing unencumbered bliss but also manifesting as an act of resistance, Fultz recalling how his grandmother remained a beacon of light even in those times when she could have allowed the social and political realities of her time to curdle her from within. 

“It can be easy to let yourself give in to whatever situation is going on, and there are times that might feel like the easier option,” he said. “I never want to feel like I’ve given up. And I want to share that message that things do get better, because they do over time. … I’ve been through a lot in my life, economically, changing homes a lot. I’ve always had to battle. But I think that should be the goal in life, to kind of take anything thrown at you and rearrange it to where you can see things differently. I want to showcase that you don’t have to give in to anything.”