“Self Portrait with new Tools”
Oil/panel
20” x 14”
2025
My studio host noticed I was using an old flip flop to spread paint on the panel. When he asked me why I told him that the soft rubbery edge of the sole allowed me to spread a layer of paint over the subsequent layer without scraping it. So, he went shopping at the local hardware stores and bought me a pile of rubber edged carpentry tools such as a trowel for applying grout between tiles. Now I have a pile of tools each with their own characteristic mark making qualities and some of them much better than the old flip flop.
These tools are very well suited for creating abstract work where the message is communicated through the paint itself and where drawing plays a relatively small role. Easy enough and quite fun. Check out the newer works on this site under Abstract 2025 to see for yourself. But I wanted to see what I could do with them to create a portrait, a genre that implies the need for drawing to shape the subject.
My goal was to use these new tools to create an expression on my face that carried emotional complexity without relying too heavily on drawing. Or, to put it another way, I didn’t want to simply draw a portrait on top of an “interesting” ground of paint and color textured with my new tools. Furthermore, I wanted to create a feeling of volume with these tools.
If I can do this, I will have opened a lot of new ground for making portraits and figures.
I still ended up “drawing” a lot to get this portrait. But it definitely begins to succeed with the terms I set for myself. There is some degree of complex emotion in the expression and that emotion was to some degree created with my new tools, not my brush.
The photograph is a picture I took of myself with my cell phone. I used this as my “model” instead of a mirror. I did this in part because of the space constraints where I paint but also to lock in the 2 dimensional image so that I would be less inclined to “search” for the figure with my brush.
“Self Portrait with Black Cap”
Oil/panel
34” x 26”
2025
This painting was inspired by my desire to find a new way to paint a portrait without relying on drawing with a brush. But this was not just about technique. This was about wanting to bring the same idea of painting the landscape in my abstract paintings to the process of figure painting.
This is a bright and charming painting. But it only begins to approach the loose free wheeling way that I create abstract painting. This piece still looks “like a particular person” way more than my landscapes “look like a particular place.”
In fact, the problem starts from the beginning. When I start my landscape paintings I don’t have a view or a photograph of a “place” in front of me. I trust the depth of my connection to my visual experience of the outdoors and with my materials and vision. The landscape just emerges and for some strange reason it has qualities like the landscape I am in or have been thinking about. It does that without any conscious effort. And yet, if I tried to create this open and imaginative effect while trying to paint a particular scene it would utterly flop.
So, I guess I will need to approach my figurative painting the same way, without a particular person or figure in mind.
“Self Portrait”
Oil/panel
24” x 24”
2025
Here is another example where I used anything but a brush to smoosh and smear paint around until an image emerged. In this case it’s a man seen in profile and he looks remarkably like me. What a coincidence!
I look startled. Perhaps I am surprised to suddenly be brought into existence on a panel in a garage in Thailand.
“The Letcher and the Artist”
Oil/Panel
24” x 24”
2025
One of my favorite ways to relax is to go to a crowded street with lots of foot traffic, get a coffee drink and sit back and watch the people. Of course it’s nice to see a beautiful woman walk by. But those prurient moments are always blended with my interest in human anatomy, especially in movement and in social contexts.
What makes a beautiful woman “beautiful.” Plato would have agreed with Pythagoras and so do I to some degree. There are indeed mathematical proportions that are just more harmonious and even mystic than others. And harmony is certainly one measure of beauty. But there are other expressions of beauty. And while math may be universal, experiencing beauty is certainly not.
This painting is without a doubt, a self portrait. But what am I doing? Am I letching? Am I admiring my own little sculptural creation?
And what is all that going on underneath us? I prefer to think of it as the muck of a dark night: wet and stormy. And yet there is some sense of cozy comfort over the hill there to the right … in the distance. It looks like a safe haven amidst the storm and the endless drama unfolding between a man and the object of his desire and the artist and his creation.
Am I already seeing a glimmer of what it’s like to let this all go?
“Ni”
Oil/panel
24” x 18”
2025
Ni is a woman I have an intense friendship with in Thailand. She is Lao but lives and works in Thailand. She did not sit for this portrait but this is unequivocally her. She has a guarded strength and bold features.
In this case I painted the panel red with an oil based enamel house paint. Then I troweled on thick green paint and immediately scraped a lot of it off. Her face appeared faintly in the smears and scratches of removed paint. All I did next was apply black paint to highlight here face. Then I scraped it off and repainted her a second time. Not because it didn’t look like her or even because I didn’t like it. No, the removal and reapplication IS the technique. There is a certain effect that results from this process that can not be created directly. At the very end I added the plant to accentuate the effect of her hiding.
When I showed the painting to her she just smiled.
This is a woman who has had her life torn down and rebuilt several times and made her the person she is.
She knew.
Oil/panel
24” x 18”
2025
“She Appeared in a Schmear”
Oil/panel
48” x 32”
2025
There was no model for this piece and no preconceived idea that it would be a painting of a nude woman. In fact I had no idea whatsoever what I would paint when I stated the painting any more than I have a plan for what I am going dream when I go to sleep.
I just started smearing paint around. Eventually this woman appeared. And before I knew it she was leaning back to stretch and rub her aching hip. All I had to do was add a touch here and there to enhance this or that so anyone could see her. She never did get lower legs and feet nor the top of her head. Guess she didn’t want to show those things.
Photo of Jeff's painting studio in Thailand
“The Colorman”
Oil/panel
14” x 10”
2025
“Sacre Bleu”
Oil/panel
30” x 24”
2025
These two pieces are inspired by a novel called Sacre Bleu by Christopher Moore. It was enjoyable fiction that features two magical characters who embody our deepest notions about artistic creation, most notably the idea of a muse as a spirit-being that gives artistic inspiration in general and specific ideas to the artist. Moore’s vision is traditional in the sense that the muse is female and inspires male artists who intrinsically intertwine sexual desire, romantic love and artistic inspiration.
But he adds a twist which is intriguing. The muse was invented and maintained over many centuries by a truly sadistic and basically malevolent spirit that he calls the “Colorman.” This website is not a place to recap the novel. But these two characters are largely responsible for driving the plot forward and constitutive a struggle between positive and negative forces in a dance that results in the creation and destruction of a lot of art.
Without realizing it, I created paintings that do embody these characters. The first painting I created is the second painting featured here. It was not my intent to do a painting of “Sacre Bleu.” But there is no denying it is her. And then one day shortly after I painted it I saw a small figure in the random marks above her head. It’s a black hooded silhouette of a figure that looks a bit malevolent. And so I recreated that blob on its own canvas and there he was, the “Colorman.”
Unfortunately the photo of the “Sacre Bleu” painting has a glare on it. But the little hint of the Colorman on her head is very black and distinct.
Several people who have read the novel and seen these paintings said the same thing. “Wow, yes, you nailed it.”
And yes, the woman is in part inspired by a woman I had an encounter with just before painting it. But this piece is also inspired by art itself most notably the novel. But it’s also inspired by ideas and ideals. I have written much about my ideas to integrate deep space which we usually associate with and see in landscape painting with the volume space which we see in paintings of people and things. Those ideas, perhaps more the domain of theoretical physics, are what pushed me to make many of the choices in creating these pieces. But even there…what choices did I make among millions? What guided my eye and my hand in the flickering moments when brush and paint meet canvas? And when and why did I stop when I did? Who is to say that there isn’t a spirit that animates these choices, even the choice to pursue these intellectual ideas in the first place. There may be more in this world than the what is in my books and ideas.
“Woman with Landscape”
Oil/panel
24” x 24”
2025
How to integrate landscape space and sculptural volume? That is the question that has motivated my best work for years. In this painting the landscape space opens up space. And conversely the figure’s volume closes or confines the space in a variety of ways. On some very basic level the lines of the figure surround the landscape. But on a more subtle level, the volume …or space…of the figure is more compressed and limited and defined compared to the expansive, illusive and hard to define space of the landscape.
You see what looks like a mountain range in the distance behind an expanse of water. But is that all inside the head of the girl? Or is the head of the girl bigger than a massive landscape? Some of these questions come up and are resolved quickly while others linger seemingly unanswerable. That is my goal.
There are other complications too. Those eyes? Are they her eyes? And if so, why are they floating where they are? Are they symbols of detached vision? Is this a painting about self reflection or vision in the literal quotidian sense or a big question about the relationship between seeing in the literal sense and vision in the metaphoric sense? And how does this combination inform consciousness.
My belief is that looking at art that asks these questions is the way in which consciousness is enhanced and intelligence is nurtured. Whether it works or not is for someone else to prove. It seems to work for me. And my hunch is it has been working for people since they started painting on cave walls…..was it 10,000 or 30,000 years ago?
Painters like me are still painting in our caves. We call them studios. But like caves, they are deep and dark and removed from everyday life, the scrum of making dinner and feeding the babies. Then, they are lit up with fires or bright lights igniting an inner vision. We are confined by the defined parameters of our caves and our studios, but we launch unlimited space and time giving birth over and over to imagination and the coalescence of an unending consciousness inside the confined space of our skulls and our bodies.
“Portrait of Some Guy”
Oil/panel
14” x 10”
2025
It’s a floating head. How weird. Initially he had a neck and was grounded to the bottom of the painting as well as the suggestion or a body.
But once I added the white outline his head was cut loose and now appears to float. Then I rolled a black landscape over his eyes and into the space above his head. The first row of mountains also doubles as a mask. And the leaf like “crown” centered right above him is a happy accident. I don’t know what it is exactly. And that is its beauty. Is it a crown? A leaf? A random mark? Part of the landscape? Who knows.
“I Got Lost on the way to the Temple”
Oil/panel
60” x 48”
2025
I painted this in Thailand. Like many people I came here to see the temples. And I did. Many. But along the way I took many detours. And some would argue that I got lost. But there is only one way to discover something new and that is to get lost.
What I was hoping to find was a way to bring out people and subjects from the muck of the paint rather than the willful act of drawing. Instead of deciding to draw and paint a particular person or building or thing, I wanted those things to reveal themselves the way landscapes do in my abstract painting.
In this painting I started by loosely applying the paint with large tools like trowels that prevented me from drawing with intention or becoming too precious. Shapes emerged quickly and suggested themselves. These are people and things I had no sat down with the intention to create. All I had to do was enhance a little here and there. Occasionally I would even attempt to obliterate something but more images would pop up in their place. Eventually the large central temple asserted itself so I made a few defining marks and there it is.
But there is also a large white Stupa emerging behind it and so many temples and people and trees and distant ridges that it’s impossible to count. There is no way I could have painted this much complexity and richness with a direct intention.
“I Got lost on the way to the Temple”
Oil/panel
36” x 30”
2025
Like other paintings I created at this time, I started the painting with no preconceived idea of what it would be and what would be in it. Typically and artist carefully selects his model and arranges him or her in very specific ways and attends to the lighting and surroundings in order to inspire and inform the painting. Or he walks through the fields until he finds the right view that will inspire and “be” his landscape painting.
Here I simply started smearing paint around on a large panel. And as figures began to suggest themselves I enhanced them or obliterated them with more paint.
I used a variety of tools to apply the paint including rollers, trowels, scrapers and yes…..even paint brushes. At one point I was curious how the soft rubber of an old slipper would move paint so I loaded up an old slipper with gobs of paint and smeared it on.
Some of the objects are definitive and others could be many things. Is that a man mounting a female figure who is distorted in a fever dream? Is that a random pair of breasts dangling in the wind in front of a temple? An inky sea at the bottom? Is the man in front of the woman or behind her or both? Is this a dream or wishful thinking?
Is this 2 people who had intended to go visit a temple but ended up in a wrestling match? Hard to know. And probably doesn’t matter.
“I got lost on the way to the temple”
Oil/panel
18” x 11”
2025
This piece is part of an experiment. Like many artists I am often trying to let my creative process evolve. Sometimes this is driven by boredom. And sometimes it is driven by the excitement of exploration and discovery. For years I have been making landscape paintings by simply letting the paint pour out on the paper or panel and then see where it takes me.
The result is a joyfully loose way of making a variety and complexity of landscapes that I could in no way create by directed will. Well, it occurred to me I could paint people this way too. I could just start laying out paint and watch for people to appear and then gently tease them out of the murk or obliterate them.
In this painting 2 figures appeared. The larger one appears to be a sculpture of a person in the style of a Matisse bust. It almost looks like a large sculpture in a garden or graveyard. But there is another figure behind them. He is wearing a fedora or a cowboy hat and may be in a boat or a wagon. In any case, it is a stormy night and he is gathering his things about him. Below is a choppy sea and above him the Sky seems to be made more of water than air. This stuff just emerges. I definitely did not sit down to paint a picture of a cowboy on a storming night with a giant Matisse sculpture in a nearby graveyard. I have a strong imagination, but not that strong. Or do I. Maybe imagination is best when disconnected from will and when pegged to plans.
In any case, this unplanned revelation of figures and varied scenes is endlessly fun.
“Three Oarsmen”
Oil/panel
8.5” x 11”
2025
Yes, it’s a very small painting. It’s only as big as a standard piece of paper. And it’s almost entirely black. And yet, I think it’s worth keeping and even having a place on this website.
Three people are in a little boat on a dark sea on a stormy night. It almost looks like they are in a cave or are they at the opening of a cave? You may not notice it at first, but below the surface is a large shark.
For me, it works like a dream: powerful symbols, parts that are clear and defined while other parts are murky and possibly have multiple meanings.
Maybe the title should be “The Dream of the Three Oarsmen.” That does sound a bit more poetic.
“The Temple Got Lost on the way to Me”
Oil/panel
48” x 32”
2025
The weird shape in the middle of the painting originally appeared as a large erect penis with generous balls hanging bellow. And I was fine with that. As anyone can see from looking over my body of work I am not shy about bold expressions of the body’s various parts. But at some point, as the painting developed, it just didn’t work anymore. So I loaded up the roller with black paint and squashed it on. What came out was a haunting floating temple. Or is it a strange hat from a bygone era? Who knows what it is.
Whatever it is, it appears to be floating over a dark and stormy landscape. It reminds me of the haunted castle that roams the landscape in the animated film “Hal’s Moving Castle” by Hayao Miyazaki. It’s almost like the castle wandered into a David Lynch film.
Poly Esther”
Oil/panel
30” x 24”
2025
I painted this in my studio in southern Thailand. It is definitely influenced by the intense green of the tropical landscape around me and the hauntingly beautiful and heavily masked women is see here. I gave it this title because an American friend said it reminded him of the character by that name in the movies of David Lynch.
And while that is kinda fun, it distracts from the more engaging aspects of this piece. If you look carefully at the piece you can see it is held together compositionally by varying ways the paint is applied as well as the bold drawing. It’s also held together by at least 3 different kinds of space: the illusion of landscape space, the illusion of sculptural volume and the flat blank space of the panel it’s painted on.
But what is really exciting for me about this piece is that it’s a breakthrough piece that opens up a lot of creative possibilities. There are many images for portraits pouring through behind this one. All of them built on these ways of making a painting.
“Self Portrait in Hell with Alien Fetus”
Oil/panel
30” x 20”
2025
I painted this on my 64th birthday. And while I started the painting with no intention of it being a self portrait, it is undoubtably me. The alien fetus more or less appeared by itself. One little black dot and it was obvious what it was. But why? It certainly looks grim. But I don’t feel that way. The disconnect between how I feel and what I paint has never bothered me. In fact, it is intriguing to me that things come out in the most unpredictable ways.
What I like about this piece is not the grimness but the contrast between the red intensity in the middle with the green landscape space around it.
