Every piece Jeff Skele creates starts with a blank canvas and a feeling—or sometimes, a fresh wood cutout, scrap metal, or a recycled glass bottle. Really, anything he can get his hands on that paint will stick to. He works with various mediums, including spray paint, house paint, oil pastels, and markers.

Sometimes, he starts with a vision in his head, but most often, the subject of Skele’s paintings comes to him while listening to a song and soaking in the blank canvas.

For Skele, making art is his own form of therapy. It’s a space to transmute the complex feelings and images floating through his head to the canvas. This reflection time is necessary; it’s his “why.”

Life before art was like being lost in the woods for years. He knew he had something to share but didn't quite know what it was. He can’t pinpoint the exact reason why he started drawing, but once he did, the feeling that he got when he put pen to paper was something he had never experienced. Then, he just never stopped. Skele has been a full-time artist for 10 and a half years now and has no plans to slow down.

Skele’s goal with his art is to make the people who look at it feel something, too. Whether it’s joy or discomfort, any feeling his work has provoked is valid. He wants people to connect somehow and make it their own.