Technique, materials and inspiration are the building blocks of Jac Kephart’s work. His abstract paintings incorporate combinations of acrylics, cements, tars and leafing on board. The materials combine to “create creations not just copy existing creations – the formulation of weight and balance, push and pull. It’s not so much the subject but how you make the materials work that ignites your imaginations”.
“I started out doing abstracts in the era of Hans Hofmann, Motherwell, DeKooning, Rothko, etc., but realized early-on that the market for abstract art was negligible and I turned to the more profitable landscapes. For 30 years I painted landscapes but there came a day when I finally burned out and realized that I could no longer continue to copy nature. I had to create something new with each painting, so I returned to the abstracts I had done in the late 1950’s.”
Now there is greater depth and a more solid foundation through the use of different materials. The pieces are almost sculptural, and that’s what he’s after. All the experiences in landscape painting were transformed into a new emotional feeling in abstracts. Since that turn-around, he has not looked back and has not painted another landscape.
These are one-of-a-kind pieces. There is something behind them…something that reaches out and draws you in. Jac feels his work strikes a chord in people-causes an emotional reaction. “Abstract art is a language all its own, you have to learn to understand the language.”
When Jac Kephart returned to abstract art after several decades as a noted landscape painter, he got an unexpected bonus. He discovered that the years of depicting the land in a realistic way had deepened his understanding of its structure, and that his command of painting techniques was immeasurably richer.
For the past few years, the artist has worked with renewed energy on mixed media paintings that reflect his long love affair with the land.
Living amid the deserts and canyons of the Colorado Rockies, Kephart creates compositions that have a grand scale and geological depth that resolve the luminous textures of their surfaces.
His use of different materials, inspired in part by a museum exhibit of Egyptian art, gives his abstractions a sculptural feel. "The ancient Egyptians worked with tars, asphaltum, metals, and powders, and produced some amazing results even with crude substances.
He also looked at the metals, cements, and clays used in Aztec and African masks and sculptures. He thought "with all the materials we have available today, why was I not using them?"
Kephart starts with birch board as a base, and attaches metallics to it with nails and glue. He uses aluminum, copper, brass sheets and gold leafing. He adds tars, burlap and rusty metal, including old tin cans, for texture. He then applies several coats of transparent and opaque paints and sands portions of the composition so that earlier layers show through.
The light works its way back through the layers, creating the inner radiance for which his paintings are known.
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