Jason Michael Mullan
Washington, D.C.–based artist and pre-professional art therapist exploring identity, trauma, and emotional vulnerability. Born in Southeast D.C. and adopted into an affluent suburban environment, Mullan’s work reflects the tension between belonging and disconnection.
As a biracial artist, he navigates the space between lived experience and imposed identity—using art as a means of confronting what was inherited, and reclaiming what is his.
I Forgive Me
I Forgive Me was developed as my thesis at the Maryland Institute College of Art.The series reflects an ongoing engagement with identity, memory, and self-reclamation—approaching these themes not as fixed ideas, but as lived experience. Through posture, gaze, and environment, the work holds moments of confrontation and stillness, where meaning is not imposed, but allowed to surface.
Rather than offering resolution, the series remains with the tension between harm and healing. It is an exploration of what it means to turn inward, to sit with what has been carried, and to begin the process of reclaiming it as one’s own.
Ad-Option
Mixed media (photography, screen print, pen on paper, acrylic paint)
36 in × 48 in
A first family photograph following early childhood adoption.
The family looks upward and to the right, toward a hopeful future.
I look in the opposite direction—searching for my mother.
The Mothers That Raised Me
Dunce
Mixed media (self-photography, screen print, acrylic paint, paint pen, chalk)
48 in × 36 in
This work draws from early experiences within the classroom, where identity was shaped through repetition, correction, and silence. The phrase “I will not be myself” appears across the surface—echoing both disciplinary language and internalized belief.
The figure sits apart, marked and exposed, occupying a space between defiance and containment. Surrounding text—fragmented, layered, and uneven—reflects the accumulation of messages absorbed over time: ideas of difference, abandonment, and the pressure to conform.
Rather than resolving these tensions, the work holds them in place. It reflects a formative environment where identity was not affirmed, but negotiated—through resistance, isolation, and the search for self-definition.
Identity
Mixed media (self-photography, screen print, acrylic paint, paint pen)
48 in × 36 in
This work centers on identity as it is externally defined and internally experienced. Constructed from a mugshot and layered with a police record listing multiple racial categories, the image reflects an official attempt to define what is not singular.
I Forgive Me
Mixed media (self-photography)
48 in × 36 in
This work centers on self-forgiveness as an internal act. The figure appears in two forms—one reaching, one in need—holding the tension between seeking help and recognizing that it must come from within.
Rather than looking outward, the work turns inward. It reflects a moment of recognition: that the act of forgiveness, like healing.
Daisy Dunn Dunnit
Mixed media (acrylic paint, paint marker, audience intervention, Fabriano paper)
60 in x 48 in
This work is part of, “The Mothers That Raised Me”, a series reflecting the figures that shaped my early sense of care and identity. Using cartoon imagery as a stand-in for maternal presence, the piece explores how nurturing can be constructed in the absence of consistent human connection.
After completion, the work was opened to public intervention during a live gallery-style event. Viewers were invited to write, mark, and graffiti directly onto the surface, transforming the image into a shared record of voice, memory, and projection. What remains is both portrait and accumulation—an image shaped not only by the artist, but also by the presence of others.
Strawberry Horror Cake
Mixed media (acrylic paint, paint marker, audience intervention on Fabriano paper)
60 in x 48 in
This work is part of,”The Mothers That Raised Me”, a series reflecting the figures that shaped my early sense of care and identity. Using cartoon imagery as a stand-in for maternal presence, the piece explores how nurturing can be constructed through fantasy when it is inconsistent or absent in lived experience. Beneath the surface of sweetness, the image begins to fracture—revealing tension between comfort and distortion.
After completion, the work was opened to public intervention during a live gallery-style event. Viewers were invited to write, mark, and graffiti directly onto the surface, transforming the image into a shared record of voice, memory, and projection. What remains is both portrait and accumulation—an image shaped not only by the artist, but also by the presence of others.
Minnie Don’t Smile
Mixed media (acrylic paint, paint marker, audience intervention on Fabriano paper)
60 in x 48 in
This work is part of, “ The Mothers That Raised Me”, a series reflecting the figures that shaped my early sense of care and identity. Using cartoon imagery as a stand-in for maternal presence, the piece explores how nurturing can be constructed through fantasy when it is inconsistent or absent in lived experience. Here, the familiar softness associated with Minnie begins to shift—her expression resisting expectation, holding tension between performance and defiance.
After completion, the work was opened to public intervention during a live gallery-style event. Viewers were invited to write, mark, and graffiti directly onto the surface, transforming the image into a shared record of voice, memory, and projection. What remains is both portrait and accumulation—an image shaped not only by the artist, but also by the presence of others.
Smurfette, Unmade
Mixed media (acrylic paint, paint marker, audience intervention on Fabriano paper)
60 in x 48 in
This work is part of, "The Mothers That Raised Me”, a series reflecting the figures that shaped my early sense of care and identity. Using cartoon imagery as a stand-in for maternal presence, the piece explores how nurturing can be constructed through fantasy when it is inconsistent or absent in lived experience. Here, the image begins to destabilize—softness giving way to distortion, revealing the strain beneath an idealized form.
After completion, the work was opened to public intervention during a live gallery-style event. Viewers were invited to write, mark, and graffiti directly onto the surface, transforming the image into a shared record of voice, memory, and projection. What remains is both portrait and accumulation—an image shaped not only by the artist, but also by the presence of others.
Hell No Kitty
Mixed media (acrylic paint, paint marker, audience intervention on Fabriano paper)
72 in x 48 in
This work is part of’ “The Mothers That Raised Me”, a series reflecting the figures that shaped my early sense of care and identity. Using cartoon imagery as a stand-in for maternal presence, the piece confronts the tension between devotion and refusal—between the expectation to be soft and the need to resist it. The figure is reimagined through a sacred pose, while the familiar face is interrupted, obstructed, and denied—suggesting a boundary where acceptance once felt required.
After completion, the work was opened to public intervention during a live gallery-style event. Viewers were invited to write, mark, and graffiti directly onto the surface, transforming the image into a shared record of voice, memory, and projection. What remains is both portrait and accumulation—an image shaped not only by the artist, but also by the presence of others.
H’Art Collection
Where the wound became visible, and the self began to take shape…
My Sacred Heart
Mixed media (acrylic paint, image transfer, spray paint, chalk, paint marker on canvas)
42 in x 50 in
The heart is held under pressure—pierced, restrained, and forced open. Arrows and nails fix it in place while the surface carries the weight of repeated impact. Veins strain, suggesting not just injury, but endurance—damage that didn’t happen once, but over time.
Angelic and cherubic forms surround the body, not as protection, but as witnesses. Their presence complicates the image—holding tension between care and harm, innocence and distortion. Gold rays extend outward, suggesting something beyond the rupture, but never resolving it.
This piece begins the H’Art Collection as confrontation, not healing. It is the moment where feeling could no longer be avoided—where the truth broke through and refused to leave.
Kintsugi
Mixed media (acrylic paint, image transfer, spray paint, chalk, paint marker on canvas)
42 in x 50 in
This piece reimagines the heart as something broken and deliberately repaired. The surface is fractured, then held back together through a Kintsugi-inspired process—where damage is not hidden, but emphasized and made visible.
The blackened form carries weight—grief, rupture, and separation. The repeated maternal imagery surrounding the heart reflects early loss, specifically the moment of separation from my biological mother. That absence becomes embedded into the structure of the piece, not as memory alone, but as origin.
Samurai blade and arrows pierce the form, introducing pressure, discipline, and violence. These elements interrupt any sense of softness, forcing the heart into a state of endurance rather than healing.
What remains is not restoration, but reconstruction—altered, reinforced, and permanently marked.
Casting Out
Mixed media (acrylic paint, image transfer, spray paint, chalk, paint marker on canvas)
42 in x 50 in
This work overlays the heart onto the image of Saint Michael casting out Satan, turning the battle inward. Michael’s leg and foot press through the body of the heart, grounding the image in confrontation rather than escape.
Demons gather at the base while angels remain above, holding the heart between opposing forces. Gold rays and spears drive outward, suggesting judgment, pressure, and force. The image does not resolve into victory—it remains suspended in the act of struggle.
This piece is about confronting what lives within. The fight for peace is not external—it is the decision to stand, engage, and refuse to be ruled by what once took hold of it.
White Was the World
Mixed media (acrylic paint, image transfer, spray paint, chalk, paint marker on canvas)
42 in x 50 in
This piece centers the heart as a constructed identity, shaped by what was present—and what was absent. The surface is built through collage, layering images of women that reflect a narrow, inherited understanding of desire, beauty, and connection.
A halo emerges on one side, horns on the other, holding tension between purity and distortion. The female form at the center becomes both focal point and projection—less about the individual, more about what was learned, absorbed, and repeated without question.
The work reflects a childhood without cultural grounding—where identity was not explained and difference was not named. Masculinity developed in silence, without guidance, leaving understanding to form through fragments rather than conversation.
What remains is recognition—an acknowledgment of how environment shapes perception, and how identity can be built from absence as much as presence.
My Screaming Heart
Mixed media (acrylic paint, image transfer, spray paint, chalk, paint marker on canvas)
42 in x 50 in
The heart is split and restrained—held in rupture rather than healed from it. Nails and bindings fix the damage in place, forcing endurance instead of resolution.
Angels remain above as guardians, holding structure while the heart fractures. Below, a cupid drives the arrow back in—not to comfort, but to insist. Love remains active, even after damage.
She’s For The Streets
Mixed media (acrylic paint, image transfer, spray paint, chalk, paint marker on canvas)
42 in x 50 in
The heart remains intact but distant—set against layers of memory, desire, and disconnection. Cultural fragments and past relationships surround it, creating a sense of familiarity that never fully resolves into belonging.
A watchful angel holds the upper edge while figures and symbols move around the heart without reaching it. The work reflects recognition rather than innocence—knowing the patterns, seeing the signs, and choosing to protect what remains open but no longer left unguarded.
I Love You, I Know
Mixed media (acrylic paint, image transfer, spray paint, chalk, paint marker on canvas)
42 in x 50 in
The heart is divided into a grid—repeated and held across different states. It is not one fixed form, but something lived through cycles.
“I love you.”
“I know.”
A moment of recognition—love expressed without needing return, understood without reassurance.
References to Romeo and Juliet bring the weight of inherited ideas of love—sacrifice and loss—while quieter images ground the work: a hand holding the heart, a child looking upward.
The Bazooka wrapper border returns the piece to childhood—origin and innocence.
This final work turns inward. The heart is not defined by what it receives, but by what it holds. Love remains—self-held and enduring.
Because…
A visual investigation into the origins of emotion, identity, attachment, trauma, addiction, masculinity, grief, healing, and human behavior.
This series explores the question beneath the surface — not just what happened, but why.
The word “because” transforms observation into understanding.
It moves beyond blame and vague affirmation toward awareness, accountability, pattern recognition, and growth.
Each piece serves as part confession, part excavation, and part reflection — asking the viewer to consider the unfinished sentence within themselves:
This happened because…
No. 1
The Reason Why…
44” × 50”
Mixed media on canvas
Acrylic paint, paint pen,
image transfer, collage,
and gold leaf
A layered meditation on grief, devotion, identity, and emotional survival, The Reason Why… merges street-art aesthetics with symbolic iconography to explore the tension between destruction and tenderness. Fragments of commercial imagery, devotional references, graffiti language, and emotional markings collide across the surface, creating a visual landscape that feels both sacred and wounded.
Gold leaf radiates from the central figure like a fractured halo, transforming pain into reverence while the surrounding imagery — distorted faces, symbols, drips, and fragmented characters — reflects the overstimulation and emotional noise of contemporary life. The work moves between chaos and intimacy, asking the viewer to sit with contradiction: beauty and decay, innocence and rage, humor and grief, death and transformation.
Rather than offering resolution, the piece functions as an emotional artifact
— a record of survival, memory, and the ongoing process of rebuilding meaning from fragmentation.
No. 2
Delta
48” x 60”
Mixed Media, Gold Leaf, Paint Pen, Transfer
Edith stands beneath a floating halo — not as a saint, but as a survivor. Inspired by Edie Sedgwick, Warhol’s tragic superstar, she becomes a symbol of beauty consumed by performance, addiction, attention, and loneliness.
Cherry Clan wrappers surround the piece like echoes from childhood, repeating “SAY NO! DRUGS” until the warning becomes background noise instead of protection.
Through the center cuts a gold Fibonacci spiral — nature’s perfect pattern layered over human chaos. The delta represents transformation: the distance between who we were shaped into and who we are trying to become.
Blurred figures, graffiti, Japanese text, and fractured imagery collapse together like damaged memories struggling to organize themselves.
The halo remains detached, searching for somewhere to belong.
This work asks the central question of the Because… series:
What exists beneath behavior before we judge the outcome?
Not to excuse.
Not to glorify.
But to understand…
Selected Works
Lucky House
Mixed media (paint pen, chalk, acrylic, photo transfer on Fabriano paper)
36 in x 60 in
Created in Baltimore, this work draws from the visual language of the city—signage, storefronts, and lived environment. A female form emerges within the composition, partially obscured, where structure and body intersect. The image holds tension between presence and concealment—what is seen, and what must be found.
The Lick
Mixed media print (screen print, paint pen, spray paint, stencil on Fabriano paper)
24in x 36 in
This work explores desire, instinct, and provocation through layered, confrontational imagery. A female figure is overlaid with mechanical and animal forms, creating tension where intimacy, consumption, and distortion intersect.
Say a Prayer for Me
Mixed media (spray paint, paint pen, splattered paint, chalk, layered on Fabriano paper)
60 in x 36 in
This work reimagines the Madonna in a moment of prayer—both sacred and exposed. Layering and gesture interrupt the traditional image, creating tension between devotion and disruption.
The figure holds space between protection and vulnerability, suggesting that prayer is not purity, but endurance—something carried through damage, not removed from it.
Prints
Milk
Mixed media print (screen print on Fabriano paper)
36 in x 24 in
A breast releases milk while a separate image below receives it—nourishment divided, yet connected. The work holds tension between innocence and exposure, care and consumption, asking where sustenance ends and need begins.
Pure Real Love (Triptych)
Screen print on Fabriano paper
36 in x 24 in (each)
The same image repeats across three color states—red, green, and light blue—shifting how the heart is read without changing its form. Love is presented as constant, but experienced differently: intense, balanced, and softened. The work explores how feeling remains the same at its core, even as perception changes.
Collage Works (Selected)
She’s Paisley, but She’s Dangerous
Collage on art board
12 × 16 in
She carries softness on the surface—patterned, familiar, almost decorative.
But beneath that is something immovable. Armed. Watching. Unapologetic.
This piece confronts the illusion of safety—how something can appear ornamental while holding weight, history, and threat. It asks what we choose to see—and what we ignore.
The Wolves Come Out at Night
Collage on art board
12 × 16 in
In the dark, instinct takes over. What daylight hides begins to move—quiet, deliberate, unrestrained.
The wolf stands over what remains, not as spectacle, but as inevitability. No performance—only nature, only truth.
This piece marks the moment control dissolves and something older takes its place, asking what emerges when the world goes quiet—and who we become when no one is watching.
V
Collage on artboard
12 × 16 in
A skull rests between sea and sky, fixed in stillness as the tide moves around it. What remains is reduced, but not erased.
The moon holds the horizon in place, offering no resolution—only continuation.
This piece confronts inevitability. Not death as an end, but as a condition that cannot be escaped.
Kick Rocks
Collage on art board
12 × 16 in
She keeps moving—past the noise, past the spectacle, past what tries to hold her in place.
Scale shifts around her—planet, crowd, celebration—but none of it changes her direction.
This piece is about dismissal and momentum. Not resistance, not escape—just the decision to keep walking.
Parlor
Collage on art board
12 × 16 in
She stands fully visible—composed, aware, and in control of the gaze placed on her.
The room frames her, but does not contain her. The space feels deliberate, constructed around her presence.
This piece centers on ownership. Not vulnerability, not performance—presence held without apology.
Fallen
Collage on art board
12 × 16 in
A body drops through the frame—caught mid-fall, suspended between what was and what follows. The moment is abrupt, irreversible, and stripped of spectacle.
Around it, images fracture and collide—icon, soldier, serpent, and structure—each holding a different register of power, control, and consequence.
This piece centers on rupture. Not a narrative, not a resolution—only the instant where descent becomes undeniable.
I Name Myself
Collage, paint marker, and handwritten poetry on art board
12 × 16 in.
I Name Myself explores the struggle between identities assigned by others and identities claimed for oneself. Built from fragmented imagery, cultural symbols, and handwritten text, the work reflects the tension between performance, expectation, memory, and self-definition.
The handwritten poem anchors the piece:
“I carried the fire through the rooms that tried to erase me. Now I name myself.”
Rather than accepting labels imposed from the outside, the work stands as an act of reclamation—a declaration that identity is not inherited, assigned, or granted, but consciously claimed.
Stick Figure Me
Bunny, Ducky, and Turtle
This is me.
The quiet version…
The one still learning how to be okay…
I don’t walk alone, though.
Bunny stays beside me
and reminds me to keep going —
slow, careful, but steady.
Turtle tells me to pause,
to breathe,
to think,
and to love what’s around me.
Ducky makes me laugh
when I forget how.
He reminds me to play,
to splash a little,
and enjoy where I am.
Together, they help me move forward.
Not fast…
but forward…
“Before I knew safety…
I learned how to survive.”
“For the first time…
I’m not rushing to arrive.”
“We’re not chasing anything anymore.”
Before I had the words…
Ad-Option
This is not just a story about adoption.
It’s a story about identity—what happens when a life is chosen for you before you can choose for yourself.
Ad-Option is a visual and narrative journey through memory, disconnection, survival, and reclamation.
From a child who didn’t yet have the language…
to a teenager trying to make sense of where he fit…
to a man who now speaks for all three.
This work is not about looking back.
It’s about understanding what was carried forward—and deciding what remains.
Before I understood what I was feeling…
Now I choose to tell it…
The war didn’t end.
It just changed.
This is the real battle.
WeAreSix
WeAreSix is a movement dedicated to men’s mental health, emotional visibility, and human connection.
Too often, men are taught to carry pain in silence — to endure, suppress, and survive alone. This movement exists to challenge that narrative.
WeAreSix is not about division.
It is not anti-woman, and it is not rooted in blame.
This is about recognition.
We welcome anyone — men, women, allies — who believe that men deserve to be seen, supported, and heard.
Because behind strength, there is often struggle.
And behind silence, there is a story.
WeAreSix stands for those stories.
Kings aren’t made in noise.
They’re made by what they can hold.
HOLD THE LINE
THE REAL BATTLE
The war never leaves you.
You just stop running.
The heart is still cracked.
It still burns.
IN THE STILLNESS
Not every battle is loud.
Some are fought in silence.
The heart is still cracked.
It still glows.