Jayne Prell
This article is dedicated to a very obscure, complicated, and troubled individual, so take heed before reading. We are travelling into an unhappy history with an unsatisfactory ending. With that in mind, let’s discuss Jayne Prell: digital illustrator, enthusiast for old cartoons, and intense horror fan.
Most of what we can learn about Jayne Prell is sourced from accounts of friends, acquaintances, and those affected by her. We have fairly little info relayed from her own mouth, and her family has been…Well, we didn’t think it would be right to contact them nor do we think the information they might have on Jayne would be truthful.
Jayne Prell drew from a young age but was never upfront with when she got hooked on the idea of cartoons. That said a large body of her memorable work was released following the young woman’s 20th birthday. From her earliest drawings, one could see a heavy focus on rubberhose style cartoons, body horror, and grasping crowds of hands. She described herself as “loving to cram as many details into her artwork as possible.” She would draw in this style for about three years, posting her art periodically and slowly connecting with other artists she met online. The art she made was an expression of her love of abstract horror, and she felt that cartoons could be used for so much more in the genre than what they typically were. She would often write long rambling threads about her desire for a slasher movie that starred a cartoon front and centre as the antagonist.
Around the final years of her artistic career, Jayne would shift her art style into a 50s inspired UPA cartoon aesthetic. She mentioned being burnt out, and perhaps this was an attempt to do something new with her art and find creative enrichment through different art styles. The work she put out during this time was equally surreal and abstract, but with a meaner and more violent edge to it.
Jayne was a very troubled individual. Graduating university during quarantine and returning to what she described to friends as a “stifling, awful, suburban family home,” she would become increasingly dependent on online communities for attention and human interaction. It was clear that the artist felt alone in her house, regularly preparing for the inevitability of homelessness or being forced into a group home by other family members. Her desire for connection led into a habit of clinging to other artists she admired online, immediately assuming them to be friends and getting extremely possessive and angry when she felt she was being “abandoned” for other relationships.
Perhaps due to the stresses and despair of her situation, she felt trapped and doomed. Regardless she could be extremely difficult to be around, and had a habit of lashing out verbally at those around her. After years of building goodwill online, it all exploded in the year of 2023. She began to slough away acquaintances and friends. It was an event I myself was vaguely aware of, but this was mainly through gossip and second hand information from friends. During this time her most violent and bleak art would be made, with her infamous character the Slishy Slasher featuring amongst the most troubling of them.
A big part - and controversy - of her new art was that it featured her cartoon killer slaughtering inanimate puppets. It was something that scared off a lot of people, but when questioned about it she had multiple explanations behind the meaning of her art. According to her she felt like a puppet in her household, as an autistic person who had let her life be written out for her and forced to play a specific role. The art was stated to be an expression of self harm, hoping for someone to cut her strings - but on another account she stated it to be a manifestation of her Borderline Personality Disorder, a “killer of relationships.” Both are probably true. Regardless, she would sink deeper away from online spaces until she went missing. Nothing has been posted from her since.
No matter how troubled of a person she might be, she could be deeply unpleasant and had an aversion to responsibility. But some pity is earned I think. As someone who pities her, I think I am obligated to archive her work as an artist. We can only speculate on what could have been if she’d just worked on herself more.
Months ago, someone sent me a link to her series of artwork surrounding a conceptual book called “The Stars and Blue” - a book that would have explored more of Slishy Slashers history, and perhaps reflect a more tender and remorseful side of Jayne as she worked to give her character a happy ending. I have been working with several art friends in order to restore this book in the form of a collaborative project, in which everyone in the group draws a page described by Jayne in the notes she left behind.