Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Jeff Donovan and the Eureka Moment




         JEFF DONOVAN AND THE EUREKA MOMENT
         By Wim Roefs

         Quite regularly, painter Edward Rice will walk into if ART Gallery and stop in his tracks, make a beeline for a particular painting, stare at it and proclaim “Wow, look at that!” Then he asks: “Who did that?” The answer usually is: Jeff Donovan.
         Both Donovan and Rice work their surfaces and work them and work them to achieve specific colors, tones, textures and spatial effects. But where Rice mostly restricts himself to paints, Donovan’s experiments run wider. “He’ll use everything he can get his hands on,” Rice commented after seeing paintings from Donovan’s Inner City Series.  
         Donovan spends considerable time making things difficult for himself and better for the rest of us with never-ending experiments that result in exquisite works of art. His many Eureka moments, related to which materials to use and how, typically come with some declaration about having found the perfect way to do thus and such and achieve this or that. Until he finds the next perfect way.  
         In one of the paintings Rice was looking at, Inner City Series 5 (Depot Man), Donovan used wax, pigmented wax, construction paper, watercolor paper, sandpaper, index card, tile, graphite, litho crayon, prismacolor pencil, charcoal and gouache. In another, Inner City Series 11, he also used wood veneer. Rice commented on dense surfaces, vertical marks, warmth coming from underneath grays and greens, raised surface establishing the pattern of roof tiles, tobacco brown interiors, sandpaper emulating newly surfaced tarmac and thickness suggesting the passing of time. “The work seems to be some kind of early Italian ­– Modernist hybrid,” he said.
         Donovan’s initial impulse is to talk about the geometric compositions rather than surfaces of the Inner City Series, which he began with four paintings in 2010 and continued this year. Only one of the paintings references the human form, which is unusual for Donovan. He first moved his figures from nature-based, organic settings to geometric environments. “Geometrically defined space provided a more interesting contrast to the organic form of the figure than the equally organic forms in nature,” Donovan says. “Then I decided to explore the compositional possibilities of the geometry of architecture without the human form.”
         “The dryness of strictly straight lines and the rigorous limitations of basic geometry were offset by the fantastic spatial distortion that I achieved through especially isometric perspective but also one- and three-point perspective and by not separating them as strictly as you would in actual practice.”
         But the shift in materials in the current work gets Donovan excited, too. “I used wax as both an adhesive and a paint, which allowed me to employ two new techniques, collage and encaustic. The universality of wax as an adhesive allows for a nearly limitless choice of materials. So far, I have restricted myself to various papers, both regular ones, such as watercolor paper, and more unusual ones, such as sandpaper.”
         “With the pigmented wax, I have to my great surprise and delight been able to use most of the dry media such as graphite, charcoal and pastel as well as some water media such as gouache. That has enabled me to achieve an even richer and more varied surface than I can get with a single medium for the entire composition. I am generally pleased with the results, but I am even more excited by future possibilities.”

                                    Wim Roefs is the owner of if ART Gallery



        


Monday, August 30, 2010

Friday, July 30, 2010

JEFF DONOVAN: Post-Retrospective Perspective, August 13 – September 4, 2010, @ if ART Gallery

Artist's Reception: Friday, August 13, 2010, 6 – 9 p.m. Since the overwhelming success of his mid-career retrospective earlier this year, Columbia, S.C., artist Jeff Donovan has been on fire. The ceramicist and painter has completed some 15 new paintings that will be shown in this upcoming exhibition at if ART Gallery. Below is a selection of the new work that will be on view during the exhibition. 
To read the biographical article about Jeff Donovan from the catalogue of his January 2011 catalogue, CLICK HERE.









Omagawd, 2010
Oil on canvas
23 x 23 in.
$ 1,650
SOLD




Night Cap, 2010
Gouache, charcoal and pastel on canvas
6 x 8 in.
$ 325
SOLD






Skeeter, 2010
Gouache, charcoal and pastel on canvas
16 x 18 in.
$ 950












The Note, 2010
Gouache, charcoal and pastel on canvas
10 x 10 in.
$ 425
SOLD




On Line, 2010
Acrylic, gouache, charcoal and pastel
on canvas
36 x 36 in.
$ 2,650
SOLD





Oh My, 2010
Acrylic, gouache, charcoal and pastel
on canvas
21x 21 in.
$ 1,325






Embrace, 2010
Acrylic, gouache, charcoal and pastel
on canvas
19 ½ x 21 in.
$ 1,250







Wondering Monk, 2010
Acrylic, gouache, charcoal and pastel
on canvas
12 x 12 in.
$ 550
SOLD






Blue J, 2010
Gouache, charcoal and pastel
on canvas
20 x 24 in.
$ 1,400
SOLD




Interface, 2010
Acrylic, gouache, charcoal and pastel
on canvas
19 ½ x 21 in.
$ 1,250
SOLD







Head Lock, 2010
 Acrylic, gouache, charcoal and pastel
 on canvas
 12 x 12 in.
 $ 550
SOLD










Twist & Shout, 2010
Acrylic, pastel and gouache on canvas
24 x 24 in.
$ 1,650

SOLD















Shower Head, 2010
Charcoal, gouache, and pastel on canvas mounted on panel
10 1/2 x 8 1/2 in.
$350

SOLD










At The Diner, 2010
Acrylic, charcoal, gouache, and pastel on canvas mounted on panel
30 x 30 in.
$ 2,000

SOLD












Sofa Man, 2010
Acrylic, gouache, charcoal and pastel on canvas
25 x 20 in.
$ 1,200
SOLD











Hmmm, 2010
Acrylic, gouache, charcoal and pastel on canvas
30 x 30 in.
$ 2,000

SOLD









Monday, April 19, 2010

JEFF DONOVAN: New Paintings








The Gabby, 2010
Acrylic, gouache, charcoal and pastel on canvas
12 x 14 in.
NFS










Sofa Man, 2010
Acrylic, gouache, charcoal and pastel on canvas
25 x 20 in.
$ 1,200














Hmmm, 2010
Acrylic, gouache, charcoal and pastel on canvas
30 x 30 in.
$ 2,000











Saturday, January 2, 2010

JEFF DONOVAN: Three Decades/Twenty Years

For a review of the exhibition in Columbia's Free Times, CLICK HERE.
For installation images, CLICK HERE.




















JEFF DONOVAN:
Three Decades/Twenty Years

A mid-career retrospective

January 8 – 19, 2010.

An if ART Gallery production @ Gallery 80808/Vista Studios, 808 Lady St., Columbia, S.C.

OPENING RECEPTION: Friday, Jan. 8, 2010, 5 – 9 pm.

32-page, full color catalogue available.

To PREVIEW works for sale in the retrospective exhibition, CLICK HERE.

To PREVIEW works in the retrospective exhibition that are not for sale, CLICK HERE.

To see pictures of Donovan creating the sculpture Striped Ties Are In, CLICK HERE.
(Courtesy of Susan Lenz)

FROM THE CATALOGUE: Jeff Donovan has packed a good 20 years of art production into the three decades-plus that have passed since completing what he considers his first successful painting, Reclining Figure, c. 1977-78. That’s not to say that he didn’t do anything at all for a decade, but between the mid-1980s and ’90s, he wasn’t producing much art. “I wouldn’t even say that I drew in my sketchbook,” Donovan says. “I just doodled a little.” His 1984 painting The Yawnwas, in hindsight, a prelude to a decade of hibernation as an artist. He still managed the first version of Overhead, a man looking toward the sky, but went dormant after that. Still, one of the hibernation-era doodles in 1994 became the original, oil pastel version of Two Drunk Popes, the model for Donovan’s popular, hand-colored 1999 woodcut of which he had to print number 31/30 to have one himself. Another doodle became the 1994 painting The Friar With The Plywood Collar Goes Boating, which subsequently, in 2005, became one of Donovan’s first ceramic sculptures. Yet more doodles turned into...CLICK HERE to read more.

For a CHRONOLOGY of Donovan's career, CLICK HERE.

Images above: Study for The Friar With The Plywood Collar Goes Boating, n.d. (1984–1994), ballpoint pen on paper towel, 2 x 1 ½ in.; The Friar With The Plywood Collar Goes Boating, 1994, oil pastel and acrylic on primed linoleum, 20 x 16 in., collection of Georgia Lake, Cayce, S.C.; The Friar With The Plywood Collar Goes Boating, 2005, ceramic, 13 ¾ x 14 ½ x 9 in., collection of Heidi Darr-Hope and Stuart Hope, Columbia, S.C.