ROSEMARY THYMES | 20
Can you provide a bit of background on your career as an artist? Where do I start? So basically, I kind of grew up in an unorthodox family, and I didn’t have a path to college or even finishing school. I moved out when I was sixteen years old, and so I just had to figure out ways to survive in the world. I never had guidance or a vision to do things the way the whole world did them, and so I just kind of made up ways that I could survive and live in the world. Art just kind of fits in that path, because you can just kind of make up the rules as you go along, and I never really had any rules as a kid. I started out in the restaurant business and became a chef and hated that—hated the long hours—but I loved cooking. Still love cooking. But once I got burned out on that, I was building furniture, and then one day I started to paint on a piece of furniture, and I just kind of followed that path of least resistance. [It] just felt right, and I just moved into it and haven’t stopped since.
photo by Sean Murphy
INSPIRED BY LIFE ON 30A A LOOK INTO JUSTIN GAFFREY’S METHOD By Fiama Mastrangelo
LOCAL ARTIST, JUSTIN GAFFREY, DOESN’T LIMIT HIMSELF TO ANY ONE PARTICULAR ART MEDIUM. Gaffrey’s works fall somewhere in between the realm of paintings and sculptures, and the sky is the limit for the self-taught artist. Now a master in sculptural acrylics, Gaffrey has become a celebrated artist with his own unique brand through his use of heavy-bodied acrylic paints. Life on the scenic route of 30A can be of great value to an artist seeking inspiration in natural places. Though Gaffrey is best known for his landscape works, the beautiful natural escapes around him provide the artist with the space to explore artistic visions and work through ideas for more conceptual pieces, rather than serving as his primary source for inspiration. Gaffrey opened up to Rosemary Thymes about his career trajectory, artistic method and some of the upcoming projects that he is working on.
How would you describe your style overall? I don’t settle in one area. There are areas that are popular that I do, kind of like when you get a popular song, and everyone wants to hear it. But personally, I just constantly have ideas where I want to try new things, new styles, and explorations—different psychologies of the way I feel about the world. So, my art just jumps all over the place. I’d say landscape is my foundation, and that’s what’s most popular. But my style jumps all over; I can’t paint landscapes every day, even though it just flows super naturally, because I get bored and I’ve got to challenge myself. Can you describe your artistic method when you begin to work on a piece? I think the inspiration comes from many different places. If I’m in a beautiful place in the environment, hiking or walking or on my boat, I might see something that inspires me which is very direct. A lot of my conceptual work comes when I’m not at work, when I’m not even thinking about work, and an idea comes. I was in New Mexico recently, and I couldn’t sleep because I was thinking about all these art ideas that had nothing to do with the landscape. None of the paintings that I conceptualized when I was in New Mexico had anything to do with the landscape I had seen. I wanted to make art that everyone participated in. Like every piece required somebody to initiate an action to complete it. I had a sleepless night thinking about all these pieces that somehow would have a hidden part, or almost like some kind of treasure hunt where people had to go out and find other parts of the piece to finish it. And it might be buried in a desert or in a safe deposit box in Iowa. Somehow it will always have a life to it that other people participate in.
