Jackson artist Jonathan Buckley, known as JBUCK, has spent the past four years building a painting practice around recurring characters, personal experiences and a visual language that he hopes will eventually extend far beyond the canvas. His latest exhibition, i see yøu, is on view at the Arts Center of Mississippi in downtown Jackson.

Painting, however, was not always the plan.

From a Family of Preachers to a Life of Creating

Buckley grew up in a family where his father, grandfather and great-grandfather were preachers. His interests went in another direction, although it took him some time to figure out exactly where.

"I've always been very interested in just creation in general," Buckley said. "I started off being very obsessed with dance, and then it went from dance to cooking to drawing to everything. I always just loved creating."

After high school, Buckley entered a graphic design program and spent time around other young artists who were painting. He joined them, and the medium stuck.

"I was like, wait, I actually don't care about graphic design as much as I thought I did," he said. "I just kind of went full force into it."

He was 19 when he decided painting was what he wanted to pursue.

Building a World Through Recurring Characters

Visitors to Vibe Studio JXN in South Jackson got a recent look at where those four years have taken him through PØRTRAITS/FACES, a solo exhibition that ran through Aug. 1, 2026. His paintings draw from experiences involving love, faith, ambition, identity and connection, often using recurring characters and symbols to tell the story.

Those characters are also central to what Buckley wants to build next.

"I'm very big on the concept of world-building," he said. "I want these characters to almost be synonymous with culture, in the same way you look at a Hello Kitty."

The comparison says a lot about the scale of his ambition. Buckley is interested in galleries and museums, but he can also imagine his characters moving beyond traditional exhibition spaces and becoming recognizable objects of culture themselves.

Four years into painting, Buckley is still near the beginning of the career he wants to build. For now, his characters live primarily on canvas, but he is already thinking about the day they might appear on shirts, bags and other objects and become recognizable without his name beside them.