Tasko

Jake “Tasko” Jacquillard is a wildstyle artist and letterer who started tagging buildings 20 years ago.

He did it while traveling between parents and struggling with his own place in the world. Tasko left his mark on streets and walls from Eugene, Oregon, to Redding, California. He did a school project in seventh grade documenting graffiti, and his father took him all around the city to take pictures of the art and tags. “It goes along with the misconceptions of tagging. It’s a crew, a brotherhood of artists. When they suggested that I was in a gang, my father laughed. Little did he know that most of the work was mine,” said Tasko.

Eventually, he started to take his street art skills and put his work on canvas. Tasko studied at the Art Institute of Portland, adding to the lessons he gained on the streets. He began doing art demos, participating in art events, exhibiting his work, and painted on live models.

Tasko uses bright colors to create flashy characters that are humanlike, with exaggerated and unrealistic features. A unique lettering style with explosions of color is what he is best known for, and spray paint has always been his main medium. “When I paint, I never have a plan,” he said. “I just go for it, expressing snippets of my mind and the things that inspire me in that particular moment.”, he says.

4139 7th Terrace South
Saint Petersburg, FL

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