Statement

My art relates to the Post-Modern movement in that it plays out the conventions of Abstract Expressionism, but in a self-conscious, methodical way. It is manneristic, pushing pure abstraction as far as it can go without being representational. It is intended to signal the end or death of Modern art, and as such sad, longing, abject, listless. It is backward-looking in that it preserves the pure, raw creative impulse, but forward-looking in that it uses proven techniques that make the work feel deep, reverent and aspirational. It is an invocation of subject-matter yet to come, and admonishment to a new humanism and intellectual rigor. In short, it is an attempt to liberate artists and art, to free them from the current need to be all things at once—the joker and the joke, the rebel and the rebellion, the motivator and the motivated—which has resulted in a recent, false pantheon of art heroes, empty irony, and diminishment of thought. I am an artist caught between the last gasps of the past, and a future yet to come.

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Bio

Gary Jacobs has been a life-long creative, but didn’t take it seriously until enrolling at the Hartford Art School, Univ. of Hartford, where he achieved his BFA in 1988. He went on to his MFA, Brooklyn College, CUNY, 1991, and teaching positions at The Corcoran School of Art, Washington DC, 1991-1994, the Hartford Art School, 1995-1999, and Tunxis Community College, Farmington, CT, 2009-present. From 1994-2009 he was a top-ranking, Product Development Artist at The Danbury Mint, MBI Inc. Norwalk, CT, and has pursued numerous other Arts-related endeavors.

Gary has been recognized for his work starting with Realism and eventually becoming completely Abstract, pushing the bounds of imagination and Post-Modernist thought. He is a Formalist and a theorist who believes that only by mastering our current challenges can we build a better society and a better world.