Drea Jay AKA Empress Trash is a visual artist who currently resides in her adopted home of West Oakland. A survivor of extreme childhood trauma, art was her escape and freedom for as long as she can remember. As a multi-versatile artist, she embraces fully abstraction, surrealism, trash art and glitch, while she utilizes radical expressionism and self-acceptance in a goal to heal her trauma along with encapsulating each moment to hopefully help others along their paths. She believes peeling back the veneer of reality allows for exploration of the subconscious meta connections between the emotional, physical, mental, sexual and spiritual realms.
Art is a process-orientated practice for her steeped in meditation, a deep understanding of how color affects the human psyche, and ultimately aspiring to embrace and articulate the unknown instead of fearing it. A considerable portion of her work is animated mixed-media utilizing acrylic, watercolor, oil, and digital mediums. Her use of varied materials reflects her passion as a life-long learner, on a constant search for new philosophies, scientific discoveries, and visual tools to communicate in an accessible manner esoteric concepts.
Drea believes elitism in art is a toxic concept and detrimental to humanity as a whole. She entered the Crypto Art scene because she truly believes it’s a conduit for radical social change, international community building and the future of art. Since March 2021, she has co-founded the art communities Fam Jam and Smol Movement.
