Seeking competence in figure painting, I spent the better part of six years drawing and painting the figure in art school, and after leaving, continued the notion of the figure in the interior. My goal was to create a visual diary that would be a pictorial record of artists and friends. Then, as now, I was intrigued by the portrait and figure as a most sacred subject.
As a landscape painter I was self-taught, and I struggled for a long time to find my vocabulary. It took many years for me to realize a structural approach, looking for the anatomy that exists in landscape as it surely does in the human subject. Since moving to Connecticut in 1994 and painting outdoors in earnest, I have become better at emphasizing abstraction of shapes. I want to refer to the individuality of the subject, those characteristics which render a person or place unique. For me this also means not merely noting the external beauty of things, but going after something a bit deeper. Put another way, I try to paint temporal qualities, but composed in such as way as to render them timeless.
Evident in my work is an enchantment with the feminine, fascination with psychological nuances, and love for the natural and architectonic shapes of landscape. I am amazed by the color of skin, continually gratified to recognize bone and muscle beneath the surface, and delighted by the powerful forms underlying the Maine coast and Connecticut River Valley. If I may be permitted understatement, I also like light, without which there would exist no space, form or visual coherence.
Website
http://www.jerrynweiss.com
