Jonas Never didn’t set out to be a trendsetter.
Originally, he set out to be a college pitcher, before his shoulder gave out on him at UC Riverside. But the old adage that if you love what you do for a living it’s not really work has turned out to be so true in his case, because he went from trying to paint the corners, in baseball terms, to painting walls, buildings and canvases with sports art.
And his work – the most prominent of which, early on, might have been his depiction of Dodgers pitcher Joe Kelly’s pouty face, directed at then-Houston Astros shortstop Carlos Correa during a 2020 game, on the outside wall of a Floyd’s 99 Barber Shop in Silver Lake – has been part of an explosion of color, as it were, on murals with which he and a number of other artists have brightened L.A.
“I ended up falling into a job doing murals for Floyd’s,” he recalled. “But as they kept expanding I said, ‘I don’t want to do the same subject matter over and over. And I realized that so many murals to that point in L.A. were like a pretty girl holding a skateboard, a kid holding a flower. … Nothing felt really area specific, except for some ones in Venice that felt dated. And I realized that sports and movies and TV shows that all took place out here and were on all the time were something that hadn’t really been tapped yet in murals.
“So I started painting a lot of ‘Karate Kid’ stuff in the Valley, ‘Point Break’ stuff in the beach cities and then Dodgers stuff by the stadium, Lakers stuff by Staples Center. And I realized the area specificity of it, and the fact that I actually enjoyed what I was painting, really kind of got me a little niche market. And I just kept going.”
When we connected earlier this month, Never said he’d “just started a new project today, so life’s always crazy.” That particular project involved his yearly association with the Genesis Invitational golf tournament at Riviera, in that case panels to represent the 100th anniversary of L.A.’s annual PGA Tour stop and Tiger Woods’ participation and host role, “kind of a combination of all the different historical things that tie into the tournament,” he said.
These are officially commissioned works, dovetailing with his passions as a sports fan, visible on his Instagram page, “never1959.” He’s done lots of Dodgers murals, including the “Mariachi Joe” depiction of, yes, Kelly in his mariachi jacket when the champion Dodgers visited the White House in 2021. (That, Never said, was a last-minute project after a mural including Julio Urías had to be replaced.) Never has also done multiple Lakers murals, most depicting the late Kobe Bryant.
But he does have standards.
“I’d love to do a Kings wall,” he said. “The Kings are the team I’m missing the most. (But) I just turned down a soccer team that’s not the L.A. soccer team I cheer for …”
(Hint: It’s the one that recently won the MLS Cup.)
“It’s always weird, being a sports fan and, like, there are certain teams I wouldn’t paint,” he said. “I wouldn’t do a Padres wall, like, ever. But the Angels, some of these other teams, I don’t see a problem with it. They’re not really rivals. But if I felt (conflicted), if there’s any swaying of guilt, then it’s not really worth it. It’s easy to be like, ‘No, I’m sorry.’”
It started, as we noted, when his shoulder started to betray him. He was at UCR from 2001-03, in the program’s early Division I seasons, and this is an indication that life can take you in funny directions: Among the players he faced in college was Justin Turner, then at Cal State Fullerton. When Turner reached the Dodgers in 2014, Never said, “we had a connection there and he set me up with a million opportunities. And then Joe Kelly came to UCR a few years after me (2007-09).”
Never said he took art classes at UCR, and when he tore his labrum and his rotator cuff and had to step away from baseball, he said, “I was like, ‘What’s the next pivot?’”
He got a job in a sports bar, and got back into painting again. As you might have guessed, the two passions ultimately merged.
The biggest challenge? Early on, he said, it was getting clearance to paint a wall.
“Now the hardest part is finding time to do those passion projects, so it’s a great shift,” he said.
“I actually found myself pivoting a little bit more to canvas work if it’s something I really want to do, because … it’s a controlled environment. I don’t deal with the weather, getting dark at 4 p.m. or (getting) permission. But if there’s something that I really feel should be on a public wall, I’ll do my best to get it.”
Some murals can be done in a day or a day and a half, he said. Others take longer.
“The last one I did in Frogtown (a neighborhood north of Elysian Park) took about a month because (of) doing the cityscape and doing the stadium, and adding all the details,” he said. “… If I can, especially if it’s a commissioned job where I can afford to take my time and rent a lift and do it right, then the end result is more important to me than rushing it.”
Never said he’s glad that “me and people like me have inspired other artists. But it used to be such a weird thing where there were no memorial murals, there were no sports murals, there were certain subject matters that were just not done. And now I feel like when someone dies or when there’s a moment (involving) the Dodgers or Lakers, I turn around and there’s 80 murals of them instantly.”
Years ago, who painted anything to commemorate a player signing with a team? Never said when he painted LeBron James in a Lakers uniform after he signed here, “I got so much hate for painting LeBron before he ‘did anything’ (as a Laker).
“Yet Shohei comes here and there’s a million murals in the first week (after he signed), and same with the Freddie Freeman moment (his walk-off grand slam in Game 1 of the World Series). I’m glad that artists, if they actually are Dodger fans or Laker fans and they’re painting what they care about and it matters to them, I’m all for it.”
There’s plenty of subject matter available throughout the region, both with the local teams and with upcoming events like the 2026 World Cup and 2028 Olympics. And, yes, he said, there almost certainly will be an eventual commemoration of the 2024 World Series champions.
“The one in Frogtown, we actually started while they were playing the Padres” in the NL Division Series, he said. “It was going to be sort of their historical World Series moments and kind of a little bit in the history of the area. And right after I laid out the portrait for Fernando (Valenzuela), he passed away. And then they kept winning. So we kind of pivoted into more of a World Series-type thing, but it wasn’t a full thing.
“I would love to (paint a full 2024 World Series mural). But I don’t want to deal with something that feels dated almost instantly.”
So here’s a hint: Once the Dodgers’ 2025 roster is fairly set, expect the 2024 mural to follow.
jalexander@scng.com
