Drip Check 09: Jason Naylor, one word painted a hundred ways

Jason Naylor has painted the word love so many times, as a coiled dragon, a dripping heart, a hundred feet of highway wall, that it stopped reading as a slogan and became a shape he can bend into almost anything.

The work

Naylor is a muralist, graphic designer and creative director based in Brooklyn, originally from Salt Lake City. He earned a BFA in graphic design from Brigham Young University, then moved to New York and joined the creative department at MAC Cosmetics, painting murals on the side until commissions outgrew the day job. He now runs his own studio under his name, working across murals, product design and advertising for clients including Coach, Sephora, Pepsi, Fenty and Adidas.

His signature look is fluorescent, gradient-filled lettering and hearts, usually set on black, built to carry a plain positive message rather than hide it. In 2023 he painted a roughly 120-foot mural along the Bronx River Parkway in Yonkers, commissioned by Yonkers Arts as part of an initiative to replace graffiti with public colour. “There is always room for more color, more kindness, more love,” he said of the piece.

© Jason Naylor. Source: jasonnaylor.nyc

What we see as makers

One motif can carry a whole body of work. Naylor keeps returning to the same word and the same heart shape, then rebuilds it every time: as a dragon’s spine for a mural in Worcester, as a wordmark on a hotel wall in Brooklyn. A tufter can do the same with one shape or phrase, treating it as a recurring form to redesign rather than a one-off idea to retire after a single piece.

Spontaneous-looking work is usually measured first. Naylor has said that most of his process happens before the paint goes on, rendering a design and measuring the wall so the final piece reads as loose and fast. A tufted panel benefits from the same order: work out the proportions on paper, then let the gun move freely once the layout is set.

Choosing the wall is part of the design. He picks projects by whether a client’s values match his own, which keeps the message consistent across very different surfaces and budgets. A tufter selling pieces can set the same filter before taking a commission, asking whether the request fits the shapes already in their own practice.

The drip connection

Look closely at Naylor’s hearts and the drip is already there: a hand-painted black trail running off the bottom edge, drawn as a fixed, repeatable shape. It is a drip as a symbol, the same every time it’s painted. Jan Fechner’s drip tufting, developed at BUBU Studio, makes an actual one: wool bleeding from one colour into the next as the gun keeps moving, never quite the same twice. Naylor draws the idea of losing control. Jan lets the wool actually do it.

Want to see what an unplanned drip looks like in wool. Book a session in Paphos.

Sources: Peter Katz, “Artist paints a message of hope along the Bronx River Parkway”, Westfair Online, 8 April 2023, westfaironline.com. “Artist Jason Naylor on What Inspires His Interactive Murals”, The Vendry, thevendry.com. Artist website, jasonnaylor.nyc.