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. I paint images of ideas not yet formed.

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Bio

Gary Jacobs earned his BFA Hartford Art School, 1988, and his MFA Brooklyn College, CUNY, 1991. He taught 3 years at the Corcoran Museum School of Art, Washington DC, and settled and started showing in Hartford, 1994-present. He has taught at several, prominent, CT colleges and Universities including 2009-present at Tunxis Community College in Farmington. His oil paintings have been acclaimed widely with shows, awards, and licensed products throughout the state and beyond. A one-time, staunch, Traditional Realist artist, Gary's mature style is a Post-Modern, Abstract Expressionism featuring rich, glowing colors, depth, and movement.