{"id":150356,"date":"2025-11-20T15:44:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T15:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/150356\/"},"modified":"2025-11-20T15:44:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T15:44:08","slug":"ryan-evans-makes-rainbows-out-of-trash-with-his-vibrant-drawings-of-consumer-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/150356\/","title":{"rendered":"Ryan Evans makes \u201crainbows out of trash\u201d with his vibrant drawings of consumer culture"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI want to make a rainbow out of trash,\u201d says Ryan Evans<\/a>, an artist based in the suburbs of South Jersey who is creating just that. Except this isn\u2019t the work of a collage artist literally taking trash and refashioning it across a canvas like a school project, but a collage-style illustrator who takes the excess of consumerism and meme imagery to create dense, multi-coloured portraits of our visual culture.<\/p>\n

Living somewhere between sincerity and satire, Ryan uses coloured pencils and acrylic paint to honour \u201cthe kind of things meant to be used once and forgotten\u201d, sometimes working directly on McDonald\u2019s receipts or parking tickets. His imagery is a splatter of mundane and even nonsensical images that find a new meaning when crammed together \u2013 pink assault rifles, military styled LaBuBu\u2019s, a keyboard\u2019s escape button, Bret Easton Ellis\u2019 American Psycho \u2013 Ryan simply connects the cerebral pathways that link images in our minds.<\/p>\n

Whether it\u2019s piggy banks on cardboard, renders of ritalin bottles on data sheets or the Internet Explorer logo drawn over a weeping Statue of Liberty, it\u2019s clear to see Ryan\u2019s sense of humour elevates his daily doomscroll into something vibrant, unlocking passages through a heightened digital world into real emotion. \u201cI ask myself what I want to see. Is it some type of visual joke I want to make or a piece of nostalgia I\u2019d like to parody?\u201d<\/p>\n

As well as that, part of the charm of Ryan\u2019s work and his eye for composition no doubt comes from his inspiration from media that inspires awe like The Matrix, Nicolas Cage films and even Death Stranding 2, an eccentric video game that some say is much more like a playable movie. Ryan channels the brain-melting absurdity of Peter Saul with the simplicity of a fast food restaurant. Garish but loveable.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m drawn to the parts of life that feel both ridiculous and terrifying \u2013 the things we scroll past but can\u2019t stop thinking about later,\u201d says Ryan, citing algorithmic abysses, existential dread and consumerism as nightmarish inspirations. \u201cYou know, the good stuff,\u201d quips Ryan. Trying to make sense of the modern and loud world, this work is how Ryan moves through the noise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI want to make a rainbow out of trash,\u201d says Ryan Evans, an artist based in the suburbs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":150357,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[307,304,305,306,308,93,61,60],"class_list":{"0":"post-150356","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150356\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}