SEWE Showcase: Jason Tako

The soul of Jason Tako’s artwork has its origins in the wetlands and prairie areas of Minnesota. He spent the summers of his youth fishing at the family cabin and winters wandering through the nearby wooded areas and playing on frozen lakes. During his senior year in high school, Jason put aside his sketchbooks and delved into music. Attending what later became McNally Smith College of Music, he studied bass guitar and jazz music theory and graduated top of his class with honors. He spent the next ten years playing in numerous rock, jazz, and country bands and recorded several albums.

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Realizing how much he missed the serenity of nature, Jason picked up his sketchbooks again and headed back out into the wetlands of southern Minnesota. After spending several years in solitude sketching from life, Jason plunged himself into studio oil painting all while keeping up his discipline of plein air painting. “I was plein air painting before I ever heard the term or knew of the movement. I only understood that drawing and painting from life was the best way to learn. Heading outdoors long before sunrise, I would spend hours in a duck blind just watching and listening. Those moments are with me to this day,” Jason says.

Pintail Trio

Jason is in the unique category of being one of the few plein air artists who paints animals from life, and one of the few wildlife artists who paints en plein air. “I have always had an interest in history, and during my years of wandering through rural Minnesota I frequently thought about the American Indians; how close they were with nature and the unique privilege they had to live in an unspoiled land. And I’ve always enjoyed drawing the human figure. It finally dawned on me, almost by accident, that this would be a subject I would thoroughly enjoy painting as it combines so many aspects of my interest,” Jason says.