Artist Statement

Philadelphia Based mixed media artist, Jerry Puryear actively challenges and recreates the daily narrative in Philly’s forgotten and hardest-hit neighborhoods. Extremely attracted to balance, It's clear that Jerry is deeply involved in community engagement through the arts with a focus on arts and culture programming and education. Jerry attended Saint Joseph’s University where he majored in Fine & Performing Arts and Education and now uses his educational background and God given talent to realize his greatest passions in life, teaching art classes around the community and using art as a means for therapy and healing. Through art he strives to document and incorporate his own personal experiences, to capture principles and concepts concerning life. He specializes in portraits, abstract, and murals to create positive, unique, and thought-provoking works, often working with repurposed materials. His brand Trippy Art Wear is his reclaimed art fashion line. 

Jerry is affiliated with several organizations and initiatives throughout the city, but primarily serves the West Philadelphia neighborhoods through his strong partnerships and collaboration with local non-profit organizations such as Spiral Q, We Embrace Fatherhood, and has served as the Artist-In-Residence for over a decade with the Mill Creek Community Partnership’s "Fine Art Through Our Eyes'' (F.A.T.O.E.) program and Art Bus initiative to name a few. Jerry enjoys facilitating pop-up art workshops, which not only provide various types of art instruction but are tailored to various age groups, accessing underdeveloped and forgotten neighborhoods across the city, demonstrating a strong commitment to engaging, enriching, and uplifting the community through the arts.

He describes his art as an examination of the soul of humanity, which stimulates thought-provoking images and questions with the intent to promote equality, caring about people, and encouraging a platform for the individual to express their personal narrative.