HELLO

AJ Finnegan’s artistic journey began at Pacific High School, where he immersed himself in both visual and performing arts. During this time, he earned multiple awards in art competitions and became the 2016 State Champion in Prose Reading. Theatre also played a formative role, with memorable performances in Legally Blonde, Shrek, James and the Giant Peach, and as Charles Guiteau in Assassins. These early experiences established a lasting interest in storytelling, performance, character, and the ways people communicate ideas.

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Following high school, AJ earned his Associate of Fine Arts from East Central College, where he consistently placed on the honor roll and President’s List. He continued his education at the Kansas City Art Institute (KCAI), earning his Bachelor of Fine Arts while maintaining high academic distinction. During his time at KCAI, he was selected for a Kansas City Royals–sponsored studio internship, recognizing his artistic dedication and talent. He also co-created the children’s book Planet Zoocey Woocey with a local author and KCAI alum and completed his senior thesis film, Gears N Lightning, which was later selected for the 2024 Uplift Film Festival.

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AJ’s professional artistic practice has continued to develop across illustration, graphic design, animation, traditional media, and digital art. He has collaborated with small businesses on logo design, branding, illustrations, and website graphics, including a five-piece art collection created for Flora and Fauna. On May 16, 2025, his digital artwork Brainflower was featured in the mental health-focused exhibition stART the Conversation, accompanied by a written statement reflecting on creativity, struggle, and personal growth. In June 2025, he was interviewed by VoyageKC Magazine, discussing his evolving artistic journey and the perseverance required to carve a meaningful path in the arts. Later that year, he contributed to the Jake’s Take Podcast 15th Anniversary Rebrand and appeared as a featured guest on the show in November 2025.

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AJ also holds a Master’s in Secondary Education, an experience that unexpectedly expanded his understanding of himself as an artist. While he had previously understood his practice primarily through the lens of narrative art, becoming an educator revealed another dimension of his curiosity: the ways ideas interact, fold, bend, and transform through human exchange and dialogue. Education encouraged him to look beyond the construction of individual narratives and become increasingly fascinated by the movement of thought itself—how one person’s ideas encounter another’s, how meaning changes through conversation, and how internal thought can become externalized through communication.

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This exploration has become the foundation of AJ’s current artistic practice, I Said What I Said, which began in January 2026 and is now his primary creative focus. The series serves as an ongoing investigation into human thought and the complex conversations that occur between the subconscious, ego, conscious mind, and the truths people carry within themselves. Drawing from his own experiences and reflections surrounding trauma, the work engages with difficult and deeply personal subjects, including experiences such as domestic abuse and divorce, while remaining interested in both the positive and negative dimensions of human experience.

Rather than presenting these experiences simply as narratives, I Said What I Said examines how the mind processes, reshapes, contradicts, suppresses, and communicates them. AJ uses the series as a means of making his internal thought processes visible, inviting viewers to witness the conversations between his subconscious, ego, and conscious mind while considering how those internal voices interact with the authentic truths expressed through the work. The series is simultaneously personal and investigative: an attempt to better understand how human thought functions through lived experience and how meaning is constructed through the exchange between internal and external worlds.

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In developing I Said What I Said, AJ is bringing together the diverse skills he has cultivated throughout his education and career. Graphic design, animation, illustration, traditional drawing, digital art, and storytelling all become tools within the practice rather than separate disciplines. His background in visual communication and animation allows him to approach the series as an evolving visual language capable of expressing ideas that may be difficult to communicate through conventional narrative alone.
 

His current work continues to explore expressive and gestural textures, treating texture as both a visual and emotional touchpoint. AJ maintains a daily sketching practice, developing selected drawings into finished digital, traditional, or hybrid works. His preferred mediums include soft pastels, digital illustration, and acrylic painting, while his digital toolkit includes Procreate, Adobe Creative Suite, Storyboard Pro, and Toon Boom Harmony.

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Looking forward, AJ intends to pursue a PhD focused on contemporary art and philosophy, continuing his investigation into human thought, communication, consciousness, and the ways artistic practice can be used as a method of inquiry. He hopes to use I Said What I Said as an ongoing means of unraveling and investigating these questions, allowing the series to evolve alongside his own understanding of the human mind and experience.

Outside of his professional and creative life, AJ enjoys working out, gaming, and spending time with his cat Savannah, friends, and family. His long-term artistic ambitions remain rooted in storytelling and world-building, with a continued interest in animation and the creation of work that encourages audiences to look inward, question their own perceptions, and engage with the complicated conversations taking place within themselves.