Polo personal trainer uses shade and shadow to pull himself back to the light

POLO – One winter day years ago when anxiety got him down, Ryan Jandrey picked up a pencil.

The Polo personal trainer had and still battles anxiety, enough so that he was on medication for a time, but he has since found a better medicine for him: art.

“It’s like turning chaos into order,” the 35-year-old Jandrey said. “It puts all the excessive energy into focus, it puts a concrete thought instead of an abstract one.”

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“It’s like turning chaos into order,” says the artist Ryan Jandrey about his need to create to battle his anxiety. (Alex T. Paschal/apaschal@shawmedia.com)

The self-taught artist was given art supplies as a gift, and on that aforementioned winter day, he started to create. He had found the process to be a reliever of stress, to be cathartic in the struggles of his anxiety that comes out of nowhere.

“In the winter, when it’s cold and I feel cooped up is when I have have the most trouble,” Jandrey said. “Heart’s pounding, cold sweats, there’s nothing in your mind that you’re freaking out about, it just comes out of nowhere.”

From all of these struggles a focused, talented artist has emerged. Jandrey is proving his ability to capture the soul and personality of a person through his use of charcoal, graphite, pen, light and shadow. His portraits are deep and personal, his technique is careful and soft, even with hard-boiled historic characters as troubled poet Edgar Allan Poe and famed existentialist Leo Tolstoy.

While learning his craft, Jandrey struggled. “Looking at faces were very overwhelming. I never had confidence for a long time because I compared myself to the masters. I need to compare myself to a month or year ago.”

The artist worked on honing his style by referencing anatomy books, looking for landmarks, breaking down the form and structure and studying ratios. “There’s a science to it, but also creativity comes in there.”

What gives Jandrey’s portraits such depth is his exercise in philosophical study and discussion. Books by Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Bukowski and “The Outsider” by Colin Wilson line his shelves.

“‘The Outsider’ is basically about people who don’t fit in with the rest of society, because they’re not happy with the surface-level thinking that most people live on, they want something deeper out of life,” Jandrey said.

He took this philosophy to heart one day by leaving a good factory job. “Do I really want to do this?” he asked himself before walking away.

He had designs on becoming a personal trainer before his exit, so studying became his new job. After focusing, studying and passing the test, he was hired at the Sterling Park District’s Westwood Sports Complex in Sterling.

Current global conditions suggest that anxiety is rampant. Art therapy isn’t for everyone, but as one who has dealt with the condition, Jandrey does offer this advice: “Don’t let it bring your walls in on you. Don’t let it stop you from living, it can quickly snowball. Keep your routine, and if you don’t have one, find one.”

Jandrey is open to commission work. Call or text 815-631-4451, find him on Facebook or look him up at @jansauce85 on Instagram.