Headstash

ART COLLECTIVE: Christian Jaxtheimer – Live Painter

Photo Credit: Calder Wilson

Name: Christian Jaxtheimer

Trade: Live Painting

Highlights: Creating art on stage with STS9, String Cheese Incident, Papadosio, Zoogma, Emancipator and at Electric Forest, Rootwire and Bear Creek.

Like so many people in the live music community, Christian Jaxtheimer was inspired by the ubiquity of art that he found in the lot.

His interest in art and animation inspired him to attend Savannah College of Art and Design in 2005. It was there that Jaxtheimer really developed his artistic skills. While attending SCAD, Jaxtheimer geared many of his projects toward poster design, as he got more involved in the live music and festival scene.

By 2007, Christian was on the road.

“I was on the road with my girlfriend, and we had a poster for every festival,” he said. “It just felt good meeting so many people who loved artwork.”

While his artistic skills were rooted in figurative illustration, his aesthetic gravitated towards geometric abstraction after graduation.

“I think where I’m at now is just a combination of everything I’ve been doing, and I’m just trying to build on it,” he said.

During his time at SCAD, Jaxtheimer met Andrew Wagner, a fellow artist and live music enthusiast. After a brief and unfulfilling stint with a screen printing company, he moved back to Savannah and started live painting with Wagner in 2009.

“I did my first three or four live paintings with him,” Jaxtheimer explained. “They were just real big and colorful and full of geometry and layering. I absolutely loved it because it was a way to interact with the crowd.”

Jaxtheimer has now painted live with some of the biggest artists in the jam and electronic scene, including STS9, The String Cheese Incident, Papadosio, Emancipator and Zoogma. He’s also painted at Electric Forrest, Rootwire, Bear Creek, Blackwater and AURA festivals.

“You get such a great reaction from people [while live painting],” he said. “I’ve had conversations with people at festivals about how our galleries and our paintings were their favorite part of the entire weekend.”

Jaxtheimer has also given back to the community, working with Conscious Alliance to create a collaborative poster with fellow artists Wagner and Andy Reed for a Colorado Papadosio run.

“I feel like that was a moment where I had gotten to another level,” he said.

Most recently, Jaxtheimer teamed up with Conscious Alliance again to create a poster for STS9’s first Great Cycle Spectacle in Denver.

“I had done the painting at Bear Creek Festival a couple months before, and it felt like it had the right physical quality to it befitting the Great Cycle Spectacle,” he said. “It turned out to be one of the best-selling Conscious Alliance posters they’ve had in three or four years. I felt super humble about that. I think they sold out of them before the show on the first night.”

Jaxtheimer has also recently had his work displayed alongside top-name artists at Northern California’s Tribe 13, an art gallery at the forefront of the visionary art movement.

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Look for Christian this summer at Electric Forrest and Impulse Music Festivals and check out more of his art on his official website, where he has more pictures of his work, along with prints and apparel for sale.

Are you an artist looking to be featured in our Art Collective series? Email editor Nick Rhodes at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and let us know.