Artists In Jackson: Ari Simeone
For years, Ari Simeone did not make art because he had learned not to.
As a kid growing up on Prince Edward Island in Canada, art was always around Ari. He drew with his father, who he calls “a fantastic artist,” and grew up in a family where creativity was part of everyday life.
“My grandmother was a teacher and she taught everything through the lens of art,” he says. “She taught math through art. She taught science through art.”
Then, for years, Ari stopped.
“While my parents were supportive, others in my life basically told me that to appear more normal, I should have nothing to do with art anymore,” he says. “And so I stopped cold turkey.”
Coming Back to It
Ari returned to painting during the pandemic, almost by accident, sitting at home with his daughter and a set of watercolors.
“We were painting and she looks at me and she’s like, ‘Why have I never seen you do this before?’” he says. “It felt like I got caught doing something I wasn’t supposed to.”
He told her he did not paint anymore. She returned with a question: “What do you mean ‘anymore?’ We’re going to fix that.”
That week, they went to the art store. Ari has been painting ever since.
“It felt like I was coming home. I remember how it felt when I stopped doing art, and I don’t want to wait for something dramatic to happen to get me to start again.”
Painting What Comes In
Much of Simeone’s work begins as translation.
“Everything that would come in through the day, whether it be things I hear or see, I would kind of lock myself in this quiet space in my house, and I would just start painting,” he says. “Everything that came in would come out.”
Ari describes the work as “a visual representation of audio and sensory input,” often building abstract landscapes shaped by motion, sound, and atmosphere rather than fixed, figurative subjects.
He says static days make for stagnant art. That instinct eventually led Ari out of solitude and into public performance.
Painting in Public
When Ari learned about and entered his first Art Battle, where a panel of artists would compete for votes, he didn’t expect much. The format was everything his process had not been: loud, crowded, timed, and public.
“I thought, this is a neat idea. I would like to watch it, but I’m probably going to hate doing it.”
Instead, he loved it. Ari won his first round, then the next, then states, then went on to compete at nationals in Florida.
Along the way, he found a new way of working.
“Painting in public, there’s always new input,” he says. “There’s always something unexpected or unusual that happens. And part of me just thrives on that.”
Now Ari regularly paints live at festivals and performances, building pieces in real time while musicians play – like at Manchester Underground, at River Raisin Distillery, where he is a focal point of the monthly performances.
“I go and paint the music.”
Doing It Anyways
At Art 634 in Jackson, Simeone’s studio has become both workspace and community space – a place to paint, experiment (he’s working on a creature-building card game), and let people see the work as it happens.
That openness and vulnerability are a result of the lessons Ari learned early on, when he was discouraged from creating.
“One of the thrills I get is from sharing my art and having people be just as excited or more about my art than I am,” he says. “Part of the completion of a piece is also others seeing it. Then my art gets to go out and see the world, too.”
Ari is still nervous making art in public, but that nervousness no longer decides whether the work gets made.
“I’m afraid of this thing,” he says, “so I’ll do it anyways.”