ABOUT the artist
Artist and educator Jeffrey Carr has had over a dozen one-person exhibitions, including solo shows at galleries in New York, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Charlottesville VA, St. Louis, MO., New Haven, CT., Indianapolis, IN. and Bloomington IN.
He has also had solo shows at a number of art schools and universities, including the University Gallery at St. Joseph’s University, the Arts Program Gallery at the University of Maryland, the Anderson Gallery at the College of William and Mary, the Slayton House Gallery in Columbia, Maryland, the Society of Fine Arts Gallery at Indiana University, the Fayerweather Gallery at the University of Virginia, the Dwight Fredrick Boyden Gallery at St. Mary’s College of Maryland and the ISA Galleria at the International School of Art in Montecastello, Italy.
He has been a visiting artist or panelist at over a dozen art schools and university art departments, including those at the New York Studio School, the University of Washington, the Pennslyvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Hollins University, the College of William and Mary, Washington University School of Art, Smith College, the University of Virginia and the Yale University School of Art.
He has published numerous articles and interviews, most recently, an interview with the artist Frank Galuszka in the online journal Painting Perceptions. He himself has been the subject of a number of articles and interviews; the most recent being an interview conducted by Larry Groff in the online journal Painting Perceptions and a number of paintings reproduced in the art and literature review Catamaran.
Jeffrey Carr has recently retired from a long and distinguished career as an artist-educator. He has taught at the Hope School of Fine Arts at the University of Indiana in Bloomington, IN., the Herron School of Art in Indianapolis, IN., Fontbonne University in St. Louis, MO., the Silvermine Guild School of Art in New Canaan, CT., and the International School of Art in Montecastello, Italy. He was a professor of Art and Chairperson of the Department of Art for over twelve years at St. Mary’s College of Maryland and was Dean of the School of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, PA. from 2003 until his retirement in 2015.
Jeffrey Carr was raised in La Jolla and on the property he now lives on, in East County, San Diego. He attended La Jolla High School and the University of California at Santa Cruz, graduating with Honors in Studio Art in 1973. He attended the New York Studio School in Manhattan in the 1970s and graduated with an M.F.A. in painting from the Yale University School of Art in 1979. Jeffrey Carr is known for his large-scale still lives and for his almost life-size portraits of women, often in mythological or symbolic settings. These may be viewed on this website in the section “Older Paintings”. Since his retirement to East County, San Diego, he has returned to an early love of painting landscape, while continuing to paint smaller scale nudes and figure paintings.
About his work:
I create my paintings in a small studio where I live in Spring Valley, California, on a property that I grew up on. From my house, I see wonderful views of the southern California landscape. There’s a hint of the ocean and of the desert where I live, and there’s light unlike any other; sometimes pale yellow, sometimes russet, sometimes slate grey. What does it mean for me to be painting the landscape I grew up looking at? My landscapes are based on a memory, a mood, an aspiration, and a dream. I can’t really paint what I see, because what I see constantly changes. Instead, I paint an ideal; the way all painting exists as temporary manifestations of an ideal. When I paint the landscape, I am actually just painting myself; myself as an experience of the light, color, and space I sense around me. I paint my experience of being alive to the presence within a place.
Looking West to Point Loma; 2020
Surfer’s Walkup at Moonlight Beach; 2020
Mt. Miguel with Purple, Stormy Clouds; 2020
Pepper Tree on Austin Avenue; 2019
I love the color and light of California. It’s the California light. I grew up here, and have waited all my life to return here. I live on the same property I grew up on, with the views of that mountain, St. Miguel, that I paint over and over again. I like the “bones” of the landscape; the geometries and contrasts of houses, streets, trees, hills, and sky. I paint the scenes I see every day on my walks. I’m best with the subject matter I see every day. When I paint a landscape I’m not so familiar with, I can’t find the scale, color, or light that I want. The light of California has liberated my color; as it did with all those French painters from Delacroix to Balthus whose color was liberated by the color of the Mediterranean. It’s the color of Diebenkorn and the Bay Area figurative painters. The art writer Robert Hughes calls this kind of color-based landscape painting, “The Landscape of Pleasure”.That’s it exactly.
Mt. Miguel in Green; 2019
I think of myself as a modernist through and through. It is the color, rhythms, and arrangement of shapes in my landscapes that create the sense of light and space, not the recording of appearances. It’s easy to say that this is true of all painting, but that’s not really so. A lot of contemporary art is about the creation and manipulation of images and associative content, not about the way color, shape, and arrangement create space, form, and light. There is depicted light, and then there is the light that is immanent within the painting. This light within the painting is generated by the interaction of pictorial elements, not an illusionistic recreation of light falling on an object. It’s two different approaches to painting. One comes out of fauvism and abstraction, the other out of naturalism and realism. My interest is in the pictorial language that is essentially abstract. That is, using subject matter as a vehicle to explore a more purely visual language.
Highlands Ave at Sunset; 2019
Horsebarn and Houses on Austin Drive; 2020
Charlotte at Seal Beach; 2021
You can access an interview with me on the Painting Perceptions blog site here: paintingperceptions.com/interview-with-jeffrey-carr/
Many of the newer landscapes, transcriptions, and nudes are for sale. My older paintings and my drawings are generally no longer available. I am also offering a limited number of high quality digital Giclee prints in small editions, signed by the artist, and available framed and unframed. See the section “Store” for details.
