Jayden Tranby dabs the corner of his paintbrush into one of several acrylic paint swatches on the palette beside him. Seated on a stool at his family’s kitchen table, the brush clutched in the toes of the Bend artist’s right foot, 15-year-old Jayden makes quick strokes of color on the canvas in front of him to create another of his electrifying Central Oregon landscape paintings.

“He does some of it with big brushes, and then he does some of the details with little brushes,” said his mother, April Tranby.

Born without arms in China in August 2009, Jayden was adopted shortly before his second birthday by April and husband David Tranby, of Bend. Jayden has adapted to doing everyday tasks with his feet.

Even before he began painting seriously two years ago, Jayden whiled away many hours building elaborate creations out of Lego blocks.

“He can just imagine a car he wants it to look like, and he just makes it out of pieces he has,” April Tranby told The Bulletin during a visit to the family’s northeast Bend home last week. “He’s always been pretty creative that way. His fine motor skills are insane, like being able to pick up with his toes these teeny tiny Legos. He has really good handwriting.”

When it comes to painting, “I just sometimes have to help — well, he can even wash his own brush, but sometimes if I’m here, he asks me to do it for him. A big brush like that, we’d do it in the sink, but otherwise, he’s pretty independent.”

First Friday exhibition and auction

“He’s awesome,” said artist and family friend Francie Towne. “It’s really cool to watch him work with his feet. I always ask him if he needs help, but I mean, he can do everything that we can do, just with his feet. It is very inspiring.”

On Friday, during First Friday Art Walk, a show of 25 of Jayden’s landscape paintings will display at Foundry Church, 60 NW Oregon Ave., in downtown Bend. Jayden will be there painting during the event, which takes place from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.

One piece in the exhibition, the painting “Three Sisters,” is being auctioned through Saturday, with money from the winning bid going to Deschutes County Search and Rescue, which played a key role in the search and recovery of the body of Jayden’s brother, Joel Tranby, who died after he fell hundreds of feet into a ravine while climbing North Sister in July 2023. Bidding is already over $1,000 in the in-progress auction. Jayden said it was important to him that the money from the winning bid go to search and rescue.

Among the remarkable things about Jayden is the fact that he began painting seriously just two years ago: The quality of his work suggests a far more seasoned artist.

Friday’s exhibition came about at the urging of Towne, who organizes two First Friday shows per year at Foundry, preferring to focus on “understated” artists — people like Jayden, who has struggled with social anxiety.

“I try to find people who wouldn’t step out and say, ‘Oh yeah, toot my horn!’ I’m going to toot it for you,” she said, laughing.

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Towne befriended fellow Foundry church members the Tranbys a decade ago, when they helped with the adoption of her kids, now ages 6 and 9 .

An artist herself, Towne began mentoring Jayden after his brother’s death, along with oil painter Xiaogang Zhu, another member of Foundry who began painting in China before moving to the U.S. “I feel like we have an artist church,” Towne said laughing.

Artists at play

“When I see a natural creative, I want to feed into that and encourage that kid to keep going,” Towne said. “When I learned that Jayden was an artist, when his brother Joel died, (I thought) that’s how I can give. We want to help to ease the family’s tremendous pain. So it’s like, what can I do? I can bring art. I can bring art supplies. I can bring a lesson. I can bring support in a way where my gifting is.”

When she began working with him, “I told Jayden that I wanted to just play, because an artist who doesn’t get out of their own head and practice other mediums, you get stuck,” Towne said. “I just wanted to bring things over that he doesn’t normally do, to push him outside of his acrylics and his paintbrushes.”

When he’s not painting, Jayden enjoys camping and para-nordic skiing. He’s enrolled in the Oregon Family School, a charter school where the majority of the schoolwork is done at home with parental supervision, according to its website.

Along with art, Jayden said, science is another favorite subject. On weekends, he spends a lot of his time painting.

“Sometimes he spends all day painting,” April Tranby said. “I’m not sure what his record is. Eight hours? Sometimes just an hour here or there. Sometimes he just really gets into it.”

Jayden usually paints from photographs, but the piece he worked on while a Bulletin reporter and photographer visited the family’s home, another painting of North, South and Middle Sister, was purely from his imagination. As he made neat strokes with the brush he held in his foot, the green paint began to morph into a forest, calling to mind the easy competence of Bob Ross of “The Joy of Painting” fame, one of the artists Jayden named as an influence and favorite artist.

But it’s nature that inspires him to paint, Jayden said.

Asked what inspired this imagined view of the Sisters, he replied, “I just went for it.”

Mouth & Foot Painting Artists

In January, Jayden was accepted as a student artist in the U.S. branch of the International Association of Mouth & Foot Painting Artists, based in Atlanta and part of a prestigious international organization headquartered in Liechtenstein. It was created in the 1950s by disabled artists in Europe and has operated in the U.S. since 1961. Among its aims is helping member artists market and promote their work and achieve creative fulfillment and financial security.

Jayden is one of just three Oregon artists in the MFPA. The vetting process for his admission was painstaking.

“They flew out someone from Georgia to interview him (and) watch him painting. We had to submit like 15 things, and they sent them to Liechtenstein,” April Tranby said. “They had artists there on a panel that decided if he got into the organization, and they accepted him.

“Just being recognized was kind of a big thing,” she said, adding that to continue being a member, his continued progress as a painter will be under review annually.

That shouldn’t be a problem considering the work Jayden is creating after just two years.

As mentor Towne said, “Can you imagine where he’ll be in a year, in five years, in 10 years?”