Jeff Kellar Exhibition at Richard Levy Gallery

Jeff Kellar: New Work Paintings, Drawings, Sculptures

March 20 - May 1

Minimal Luminism Reductive abstractions as impressions of the natural world and the built environment.

The paintings that are made with light colors of similar value, mimic the effects of sky and water at dawn.

The subtle color contrasts create the effect of a slow scintillation or the sense of a slow progression that is felt more than seen.

This resembles the way the ocean starts to glow at dawn before the sun is visible on the horizon. The sky lightens and the water slowly starts to glow as if the light is coming from below.

The paintings made with deep saturated colors of similar value, also mimic the natural world. They have the effect of exciting then soothing the eyes, in the manner of looking away from the bright scene of midday into the cool deep light reflected under the trees.

Or when looking into the center of a flower, such as a peony, where the shadows of petals and the reflected light on them creates a place of reverberating scale.

Jeff Kellar Lined Space Pink 2 2020 resin, clay and pigment on aluminum composite panel 36 x 24 inches 91.4 x 61 cm $6,500

Jeff Kellar Lined Space Orange 3, 2019 resin, clay and pigment on aluminum composite panel 36 x 24 inches: panel 91.4 x 61 cm $6,500

Jeff Kellar Lined Space Blue 2018 resin, clay and pigment on aluminum composite panel 16.5 x 18 inches, 41.9 x 45.7 cm $3,200

The paintings with shapes silhouetted on a contrasting ground are also about the sense of place created by light and color. The viewer resolves the ambiguity of the flatness by seeing the figure as a form in the space created by the ground.

Jeff Kellar Shade Blue 2, 2019 resin, clay and pigment on aluminum composite panel 32.5 x 30 inches: panel 82.6 x 76.2 cm $6,700

The paintings with stripes create the essence of the sensations of light in landscapes and seascapes or the way that an interior changes with the movement of sunlight across it

Jeff Kellar Lined Space Orange 2020 resin, clay and pigment on aluminum composite panel 30 x 24 inches
 76.2 x 61 cm $6,700

Jeff Kellar, Lined Space White, 2018, resin, clay and pigment on aluminum composite panel, 30.5 x 55 inches, 77.5 x 139.7 cm: panel, $8,000

The paintings and the sculptures are painted with a combination of pigmented resin and clay.

They are built up in layers that can look opaque or translucent depending on the handling of the layers.

The surface can be smooth or the top layer can reveal the layers that came before it. The material reflects light in a soft way that looks deep and makes the colors glow.

Jeff Kellar Blocks(B-RR15), 2018 resin, clay and pigment on wood 7.5 x 2.25 x 2.5 inches 19.1 x 5.7 x 6.4 cm $1,800

Jeff Kellar Blocks(B-WY16), 2018 resin, clay and pigment on wood 9.5 x 2 x 2.75 inches 24.1 x 5.1 x 7 cm $1,800

Jeff Kellar Blocks(B-BBB17), 2018 resin, clay and pigment on wood 10.5 x 3.75 x 3.3 inches 26.7 x 9.5 x 8.4 cm $1,800

Jeff Kellar Blocks(B-YB18), 2018 resin, clay and pigment on wood 9 x 2.5 x 3.25 inches 22.9 x 6.4 x 8.3 cm $1,800

Jeff Kellar Blocks(B-RR19), 2018 resin, clay and pigment on wood 7 x 1.25 x 4 inches 17.8 x 3.2 x 10.2 cm $1,800

The works on paper are silhouettes of the sculptures. In person, the sculptures are small enough to be held in one or in both hands, but the impression and the meaning of scale is ambiguous. They could be thought of as diminutive or as monumental. The drawings also are small, but the scale they refer to is even more ambiguous. They have eliminated the play of light and shadow that gives clues about depth and form, so that even more is left to the viewer’s imagination.

The drawings are made with oil stick on a background of the clay/resin mixture on a support of 300 lb. watercolor paper.

Jeff Kellar white w/red 2, 2019 oil stick on 300lb watercolor paper coated w/resin, clay and pigment 16 x 12 inches: paper 40.6 x 30.5 cm $2,400

Jeff Kellar white w/green, 2019 oil stick on 300lb watercolor paper coated w/resin, clay and pigment 16 x 12 inches: paper 40.6 x 30.5 cm $2,400

Jeff Kellar white w/black 3, 2019 oil stick on 300lb watercolor paper coated w/resin, clay and pigment 16 x 12 inches: paper 40.6 x 30.5 cm $2,400

Jeff Kellar white w/raw sienna, 2019 oil stick on 300lb watercolor paper coated w/resin, clay and pigment 16 x 12 inches: paper 40.6 x 30.5 cm $2,400

Jeff Kellar white w/red, 2019 oil stick on 300lb watercolor paper coated w/resin, clay and pigment 16 x 12 inches: paper 40.6 x 30.5 cm $2,400

Jeff Kellar white w/black 1, 2018 oil stick on 300lb watercolor paper coated w/resin, clay and pigment 16 x 12 inches: paper 40.6 x 30.5 cm $2,400

Jeff Kellar white w/blue 2, 2018 oil stick on 300lb watercolor paper coated w/resin, clay and pigment 16 x 12 inches: paper 40.6 x 30.5 cm $2,400

Jeff Kellar white w/yellow 3, 2018 oil stick on 300lb watercolor paper coated w/resin, clay and pigment 16 x 12 inches: paper 40.6 x 30.5 cm $2,400

Jeff Kellar 4 white w/black 2, 2018 oil stick on 300lb watercolor paper coated w/resin, clay and pigment 16 x 12 inches: paper 40.6 x 30.5 cm $2,400

Jeff Kellar (b. 1949) creates pristine minimalist paintings, drawings, and sculptures that play with illusion and space. His sophisticated surfaces are achieved through the application of many layers of acrylic resin and clay pigment onto paper, aluminum panels, and wood blocks. He sands and buffs each layer, leaving the surface smooth and modulated. Although these works are rendered with extreme precision, slight irregularities in the surfaces reveal the artist’s hand.

Kellar investigates the optics of light by varying his approach to building each painting’s surface. Some works explore luminosity and are intended to “glow,” while others investigate flatness through the absence of reflected light.

Kellar’s work can be found in the collections of the Farnsworth Museum of Art in Rockland, ME, the Maine Department of Conservation, the Microsoft Collection in Seattle, the Museum of American Art in Philadelphia, and the Portland Museum of Art in Portland, ME, among many others. Jeff Kellar lives and works in Maine and was a 2014 recipient of the Adolf and Ester Gottlieb Foundation Grant.

Richard Levy Gallery

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I am very interested in the way emotions are affected by specific aspects of the perception of space—monumental, cozy, long, narrow, high-ceilinged, cramped. My paintings are held away from the wall. While they allude to imagined space, they are presented not as an illusionary window . . . but as selfconscious artifice . . . self-conscious in that its subject is the power of art to create illusions.

- Jeff Kellar

Exhibition Closes May 1, 2020

Jeff Kellar: New Work Paintings, Drawings, Sculptures

March 20 - May 1