Tom Jenks started by selling bleach stencil t-shirts at music and art festivals, and has since expanded into painted hats, leggings, and hoodies, as well as original paintings and prints.
Tom's inspiration comes from the ecstatic experiences he discovered on dance floors at festivals during a tour through California in 2011, where he practiced translating the rhythms of the music, through pens and notebooks, while moving and feeling the high vibes of psychedelic electronic music. The challenge for him, was to embody and "dance into being," the intelligence and joy, of the energies he felt erupting through his psyche.
After returning from California, he found a great facility for communicating these energetic, multidimensional realities, through making stencils of symbols, geometries, and energy patterns, and aerosol painting through them. An amazing gratification came through sharing these creations. Finally, what seemed to be utterly beyond words, was conveyed through art.
Next came a breakthrough, when Tom discovered he could make vinyl stencils, and spray watered down bleach through them and onto t-shirts. Now someone could wear the symbols and geometries, and go dancing inside a magickal garment of inspiration from beyond! The feelings he experienced when wearing these shirts "out in the world," were ones of embodiment, empowerment, and of storytelling - relating the ecstatic shamanic journey into multidimensional awareness. The dance became one of not just Tom moving to the music, but one of the frequencies of the Sri Yantra or the Chaosphere, moving through the dance floor!
Ever since, Tom has been having fun with the great challenge of organizing the stencil images into coherent worlds. It has been a time of incredible learning, through experimenting with different compositions, layers, sequences, and techniques. The challenge before him now, is to use the medium of the computer to refine these compositions, add detail, and increase the density of novelty!
