Jason A. Cina

I grew up in NYC on Roosevelt Island and currently reside in Woodside, Queens. I studied the visual arts throughout my childhood and formally trained in theatrical scenic and lighting design. Shortly before dropping out of graduate school I had returned to my roots in photography and painting something serious and abruptly altered my path. I hocked my trade for several years by lighting plays and painting scenery deep in the trenches of Off-Broadway, some TV and Summer Stock and toured nationally many times over with actors and jazz musicians all the while taking advantage of those opportunities to refine my visual acuity.

The past decade I have worked primarily as a teaching artist in schools and for charitable organizations throughout the city. In 2007 I founded the photography program at the Harlem Children’s Zone triggering my further immersion into candid portraiture whereas for nearly six years after I ran an art and photography program for adults with moderate to severe developmental disabilities during the course of which I realized there were many shared visual commonalities as well as restrictions. That discovery forced me to radically transform my own work and spend the subsequent years producing a new series of mixed media paintings. To date there are eleven pieces.