Jesse Draxler is an American visual artist, illustrator and art director, known for his monochromatic mixed media work combining painting, photography and collage. His work has been auctioned at Christie's alongside works by post-war and contemporary artists such as Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, and he has exhibited in the United States and Europe.
Biography Jesse Draxler grew up in a rural town in Wisconsin, where his family ran an automobile repair service. In first grade, he discovered that he was color blind, being red-green color deficient. He studied at the College of Visual Arts in St. Paul, Minnesota, writing his thesis on the commodification of subculture through the lens of punk rock, and began exhibiting in 2012.
In 2018, Draxler released his first book, Misophonia, through Sacred Bones, with a foreword by musician Greg Puciato, and co-founded with Puciato the record label and art collective Federal Prisoner.
In 2020, Draxler released Reigning Cement, an audio-visual project pairing a book of photographs and collages with an album built from audio assets — recordings of the industrial area outside his Los Angeles studio — given to thirty-four musicians, who could arrange them freely while only adding vocals. Its singles featured Full of Hell vocalist Dylan Walker and the band Vowws.
In 2023, Draxler published his second book, The World is Mine & I'm Thinking About You (Sacred Bones), alongside the solo exhibition U&I in Los Angeles, later restaged as U&I 1.5 at Valuart Gallery in Lugano, Switzerland. In 2024, he held the solo exhibition Good Artists Do Bad Things in Milan, curated by musician Achille Lauro.
In December 2024, Draxler's work Pillar was offered at Christie's "First Open | Post-War and Contemporary Art" auction in New York, which featured works by post-war and contemporary artists including Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat and George Condo.
In December 2025, Draxler presented the installation C280: The Machine of Loving Grace with The Patina Collective during Art Basel Miami, released under Radical Iconography Productions (RIP), a platform he founded to distribute his music, books and installations. His second album, Tongue of Angels, with collaborators including Zola Jesus, Iggor Cavalera, Ian Astbury and Ho99o9, is scheduled for release on July 31, 2026, via Federal Prisoner.
Artistry Jesse Draxler is a mixed media and multidisciplinary artist, and his pieces combine painting, photography, collage, typography and digital painting. Among their characteristics are distorting the human form, working in grayscale, and abstract landscapes. Writer Kyle Fitzpatrick described his portrayals as "a person mid-question ... Everything is abstracted just slightly, just enough to unnerve and entrance ... [It] feels as if his subjects are slowly focusing and refocusing, trying to become clearer", while artist Mike Carney said that it "is an authentic look into the transitional stasis of a technologically saturated existence, and the lapse of connection, far from bridged within its void."
Jesse Draxler's varied influences include heavy metal and electronic music, Zen literature, automotive machinery, background noise, and films. He says that much of his work "involves directly translating what I hear into what I see." Before relocating from Minneapolis to Los Angeles in January 2015, Draxler cut out all color and started to work solely in black and white. As a colorblind person, he described his transition as "natural" and felt that it opened up his artistic vision rather than limiting it.
Draxler's work has inspired music by Daniel Davies and Zola Jesus. As an illustrator, his clients have included The New York Times and Alexander McQueen.
Works
Misophonia (2018) Reigning Cement (2020) The World is Mine & I'm Thinking About You (2023) U&I Exhibition Book (2023) Tongue of Angels (2026)
References
External links Official website Federal Prisoner