art-award

J.M.M. Ys

art-award

http://www.jmmys.art

(J.M.M.Ys)Janice Maria Mancini Ys (1987) The Netherlands

Artist / painter / visual artist

BUTTON, 100×100 cm, oil paint on canvas, 2026.

ARTIST STATEMENT

I am interested in the moment when a familiar image starts to become something else.

I work across painting, drawing, photography and digital media, using oil, acrylic, ink and Polychromos pencils alongside digital painting and 3D elements. I move between these mediums because the image itself tells me what it needs.

I often begin with something recognizable: a face, a body, a bird, a landscape, a fragment from art history. While working, I distort, cut apart and recombine these forms until their original identity starts to slip. A body can become meat, a bird can become a self-portrait, and an image can turn into something I did not intend to make.

This way of working comes from a fascination with the space between the conscious and the subconscious, the things we carry, but don’t always have words for. Recurring elements in my work include distorted faces, birds, sea and sky, and shifts between pink and blue. In series such asINNING (2026), currently in development, BONING (2025) and BIRDEN (2025), I explore these forms more intuitively, allowing the image to develop through the act of making rather than starting with a fixed answer.

For me, the interesting part is what happens when an image stops behaving the way I expect it to.

For a broader view of my practice and its development over the past decade, explore the full portfolio athttp://www.jmmys.art

Serie: BONING 2025

BONING (50×70 cm kraft papers) is a 7 part-series of oil paintings and polychromos pencils. It is literally breaking down the flesh while metaphorically growing a backbone. Fragmented and suggestive, welcome to the meat parlor.

It marks a shift in my practice, from urban drawing and storytelling toward the abstract subconscious, in a process of decomposition and reformation.

oil paint bones abstract surrealism janice ys jmmy ys vibrant colors peach

oilpaint art janice ys, ham meat cold cuts bones bird surrealism modern 2025

oil paint art oilpaint art janice ys, ham meat cold cuts bones bird surrealism modern 2025

Boning: FRAGMENTS, oilpaint on kraft paper, 50 x 70 cm. abstract art janice ys jmmys

Boning: Sticks and Bones, oil on kraft paper, 50 x 70 cm. art jmmys janice ys modern

Boning: Sticks and Bones, oil on kraft paper, 50 x 70 cm. Meat art jmmys janice ys modern

INSERT (81×42 cm) Oil and acrylics on a panel, 2025

painting 3d retro colors orange FRAGMENT boning art janice ys jmmys

Serie: BIRDEN 2025

The serieBIRDEN is like BONING, it digs beneath the surface. Not just into structure or bones, but into the fog that hangs between thought and body.
The word Birden plays with layers, it sounds like “bird,” suggests “burden”.

These figures came sudden and instinctive. Like a pattern I didn’t plan, but knew. As an unaware burden on your shoulders that your brain has trained you to ignore, (sometimes) reinforced by societal conditioning so you wouldn’t notice it. For example, the endless chase for material things.