artist statement
It’s about creating what lives inside you. Bringing out emotions I have yet to know or deal with.
The work comes from my subconscious — figures, symbols, fragments of experience that keep surfacing - whether I invite them or not. I’m processing things. Relationships, identity, memory, a hard life being lived and examined at the same time. Painting gets to the places words can’t reach. It’s therapy. It’s compulsion.
No art school. No plan. No rules. Eleven years of showing up and painting through it.
Each painting stands alone. No series, no predetermined concepts. Just what comes out when I begin painting.
Some will get it now. Some will come around later.
Some won’t at all — and that’s okay too. I’m not making this work to be liked. I’m making it because I have to.
The work is large because the feelings are large. The work belongs to everyone. You don’t need to understand it.
What you feel is yours.
Justin Luehr Art / 2026
Bio
I’m a self-taught contemporary painter splitting my time between Portland and Hood River, Oregon. I’ve been painting since I was a kid, and for the past eleven years or so I’ve been pursuing painting professionally.
My work is influenced by everyday experiences, observations, and the society around me. I’m also heavily influenced by the visual culture I grew up with—early skateboard and snowboard graphics, graffiti, street art, and hip-hop. I never went to art school. My education has come from years of painting, experimenting, observing, and continuing to make work.
In June 2026, I had my first solo show with Elle Gallery in Portland. We took the show outside, setting up on the corner of SW 3rd and Oak and putting the work directly in front of the public. No white gallery walls, no art-world gatekeeping—just raw art out in the open for anyone to experience.
My work was also featured in a group show at The Evac Gallery in New York City in August 2022. For the 2020–2021 winter season, I collaborated with YES Snowboards on artwork that was produced and distributed around the world.
I continue to paint because it’s what I’ve always done and what I need to do. I’m interested in where instinct, experience, emotion, and the world around me collide on the canvas.
