About
Jed-Lee Max Metayer (b. 2001, Plantation, FL) is a self-taught Haitian American abstract painter based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. His work approaches painting as a devotional act, developing a visual language of spirals, repetition, and abstraction through which he synthesizes prayer, memory, and contemplation. Drawing from Christianity, Haitian philosophy, and meditation, Metayer creates paintings that function as sites of communion, where making becomes both a spiritual practice and a means of reflection.
Metayer has presented work in solo and group exhibitions throughout South Florida, including Bailey Contemporary Arts (BaCA), the Coral Springs Museum of Art, and Green Space Miami. He is a recipient of a 2026 Broward County Cultural Division Artist Support Grant and has recently participated in residencies at Bailey Contemporary Arts and Miami Community Radio.
Artist Statement
I was called to painting because I needed somewhere to place the things I did not yet have words for. There were emotions and experiences that felt beyond language, and the canvas became a place where they could exist without needing to be explained. Through painting, I began to develop a visual language guided less by logic than by intuition, allowing each work to become both a journal entry and a mirror.
What began as a way of navigating grief became an ongoing conversation between God, myself, and the painting itself. I paint and pray simultaneously, allowing each work to unfold through listening, reflection, and repetition. Rather than illustrating faith, my paintings function as sites of communion, where meaning emerges through the act of making and where each conversation deepens my understanding of both the work and myself.
My Uzumaki series expands this visual language through the spiral, a form that embodies cycles of prayer, memory, and rebirth while creating contemplative spaces that invite stillness and sustained attention. Spirals emerge, dissolve, and reform across layered fields of color, reflecting the ways prayer, memory, and transformation continually shape one another.
In a culture saturated by distraction, I hope my work offers an opportunity to slow down. Painting has become my way of listening to God, to myself, and to the communion made possible through the act of painting.