Jay Lynn Gomez

Jay's parents, hailing from different parts of the Mexican countryside (west of Mexico City and south of Guadalajara), left for the United States in the 1970s.

Her mother and father arrived in California separately without legal documentation.

They married one year before Jay's birth in 1985, and later became US citizens following the births of their second daughter.

Gomez spent her childhood admiring the tireless work of her mother, Maria Elena, a school custodian, and her father Ramiro Sr., a Costco truck driver.

While her parents worked, Gomez's grandmother took care of her and her sisters, assuming a vital role in her upbringing and providing her with unwavering support as she came to terms with her sexuality.

Throughout her childhood, Gomez grappled with her sexual identity, identifying at the time as male and understanding that her attraction to other boys was disapproved of by her traditional Mexican family.

Following the initial shock, her family came to support her homosexuality.

Shortly after graduating from high school, Gomez met a photographer and filmmaker David Feldman.

The pair are now married and live in West Hollywood.

Feldman plays a critical role in the documentation and preservation process of Gomez's work.

Before her cardboard cutouts are either stolen, thrown out, or destroyed, Feldman photographs the artwork in its intended position and location.

These images are then hung in Charlie James Gallery exhibitions, as well as others nationwide.

In late March 2021, Gomez posted on Instagram that she is a trans woman.

In the post, she expressed gratitude to friends and family for their support.

Throughout her childhood, Gomez found school assignments and classes tedious.

Nevertheless, she excelled in the art studio, eventually resulting in a partial scholarship to the California Institute of the Arts Due to a combination of financial struggles and the passing of her grandmother, Gomez dropped out of CalArts after one year.

Jay Lynn Gomez (formerly Ramiro Gomez; born 1986) is an American painter based in West Hollywood, California.

Her artwork addresses social justice issues, focusing specifically on topics of immigration, race, and labor.

Much of her work highlights the efforts of unseen laborers who maintain landscapes and produce luxury products.

Born in 1986 in San Bernardino, California, Jay Lynn Gomez is the child of two formerly-undocumented Mexican immigrants.

Gomez adopted the nickname "Jay" in her childhood to distinguish herself from her father, Ramiro Gomez Sr.

In order to make a living, Gomez secured a job as a private nanny for a Los Angeles family, which she began in September 2009.

She held this job for two years and it provided her with the stability she had lacked previously.

Not only did it provide a steady income and a reliable living situation, but it also allowed Gomez to work alongside people whose backgrounds resembled hers, reminding her of her family's Latino immigrant roots.

During these two years when Gomez cared for the family's children, she began her first artistic series, Domestic Scenes, which documented her daily experiences and observations of the other workers in the home and the neighborhood.

As the children napped, Gomez would retreat to her room so that she could paint loose representations of her fellow workers, depicting male workers in their outdoor sphere tending to the lawn and pool and female housekeepers cleaning the interiors.

While working as a nanny, Gomez would look at issues of Luxe, Dwell, Architectural Digest, and Elle Décor displayed in her employer's home.

Upon flipping through the pages, Gomez found the images devoid of the workers who maintained the advertised domestic lifestyle.

This realization prompted her to begin her series, Domestic Scenes (2012–present), in which she superimposes domestic workers onto advertisements in high-end magazines to reinsert an image of the Latino community into the public consciousness.

Gomez depicts the figures of housekeepers, nannies, and gardeners completing their daily duties in the Chicano Rasquache style, as a way to both, acknowledge and document their lives and labor.

Gomez gives each of her workers a Latino name such as Maria, Lupita, or Carmen but renders the figures with loose and rough strokes that blur any identifiable facial features, which writer Katharine Schwab states "reframes the David Hockney paintings and glossy magazine advertisements he takes for inspiration, putting the lives of California’s near-invisible and individually disposable workers front and center."

In addition to their names, most of her figures are presented with dark skin and brown hair to fully represent the archetype of a Latino domestic worker.

The series acts as a photo study, documenting the figures that advertisements have erased from the narrative.

These images earned Gomez recognition within the art world, resulting in her partnership with the California-based art dealer Charlie James Gallery.

In Jay Lynn Gomez's series of “Waiting for Checks (2013-present)” paintings of domestic women working, Gomez's intent is to demonstrate the boundaries of the domestic worker's experience.

Through her art, Gomez contributes to providing relevance of domestic labor.

She mentions how art pieces can be hanged in a wealthy home and just be seen as a regular painting of art.

The message of the art is showing the importance and labor of domestic workers.

In the article by David Brody titled, Painting Labor: Ramiro Gomez's Representations of Domestic Work”, “Yvette Waits for Her Check speaks to the boundaries that delimit the experience of the domestic worker (pg.157).” This is an example that domestic women workers are not allowed to receive their payment until after they do their work because of the high expectations of their boss.

Jay Lynn Gomez's art shows the injustice of “class, race, gender and immigration (pg.158).”